Act of justice, p.17
Act of Justice, page 17
After silently tallying the bodies she had left behind that day, Dahlia huffed and hiked her eyebrows. Four dead, three neutralized. Inwardly, she smiled. Some of my best work.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
.
Chapter 32: Longshot
1:47 p.m.
“I’ve been able to verify through our liaison in the Canadian government that…” Charity glimpsed the Suburban’s occupants; Dahlia on her right, Hardy behind the wheel and Cruz in the front passenger seat, “maps similar to the one Nadir gave you, were discovered on the man’s strip club buddies.”
Having taken a big bite of his sandwich, Hardy chewed, swallowed and drew a couple pulls from a straw, washing down the food with Mellow Yellow. “Let me guess,” he wiped his face with a napkin, “each map had a different location circled.”
After picking up Charity from the airport, the team had stopped at Subway for a quick bite. To speed things up, all three orders were the same—ham and cheese, chips and a beverage. Charity passed on lunch. She had eaten on the plane. Having been read in on what had happened at the mall, she was now briefing the team on what she had discovered.
“Yes. Ohio, Virginia and Tennessee. The only states not accounted for on the map are Georgia and Louisiana.”
Hardy brought the ham and cheese to his mouth, but stopped before taking another bite. “Pushkin could have been here to line up someone for Louisiana, and Georgia…” pausing, still holding his lunch a few inches from his face, he squinted through the windshield, “Georgia could have been another cell’s responsibility…or not in the plan to begin with.” He tore off a hunk of his lunch.
“I also got a possible hit on Kosolov.” Charity pushed on the bridge of her eyeglasses, sending them further up her nose, before working her laptop. Moments later, she looked up to see her teammates staring at her.
His mouth full, his upper body cranked around to see his information specialist, Hardy hiked his brows at her.
She flashed everyone a faint grin. “Sorry. I guess I should have led with that.” Her hand shot upward. “To be clear, it wasn’t much of a hit. When he checked out of a bed and breakfast in,” she tapped keys, “Texas…Tyler, Texas…I got a ping on one of his past aliases. I called the ‘B’ and ‘B’ and spoke with the owner. After some wrangling and throwing around my FBI weight, she gave me a physical description.”
“And?” Hardy wrapped up the rest of his meal and dropped it into a paper bag.
“And…she said he was about six feet tall, lean and fit, and wore an expensive suit. Her description of his facial features was somewhat close to the digital sketch from Doctor Rossi, but,” she hesitated, “I wouldn’t bet on him being Kosolov.”
Balling her wrapper, “Incoming,” Dahlia tossed the paper ball at Hardy before facing Charity, “Why’s that?”
He caught the refuse and tossed it into the bag next to him.
“The owner didn’t sound too sure of herself on the phone. To be honest, I may have overplayed my status within the agency…” Charity held up a hand, her thumb and forefinger almost touching, “just a tad. I think she was more concerned with what would happen to her if she didn’t cooperate with me.” Charity shrugged. “At any rate, it’s the best—and the only—lead we’ve gotten on Kosolov’s whereabouts. I figured I needed to inform you.”
Hardy pinched the straw between his lips and drew soda pop from the container. He swallowed. “Does anyone else feel as if this whole thing has been handed to us on a silver platter?”
Charity looked at his image in the rearview mirror.
Dahlia turned away from her window and frowned at the side of his face.
Cruz spun her head toward him.
“Think about it.” He returned his drink to the cup holder. “Video footage shows Nadir getting off that bus in Canada. We track him to a strip club, where he’s with three other men. All of them have maps of where they’re supposed to go. Cherry gets face rec hits on Pushkin at each of those locations,” Hardy raised a finger, “but nowhere else…before he finally winds up at a fifth location in Louisiana.” He shook his head and made a face. “It seems to me this guy—Pushkin—wanted to be seen…caught on camera in all those places.”
“You think,” Cruz crossed her right leg over her left and leaned on the center console, “he was leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for us to follow?”
Eyeing her, Hardy lifted his shoulders.
“Another diversion…” Charity listed right to see his face in the rearview mirror, “like we did in Venezuela.”
The other women shot looks at her.
Cruz came back to Hardy. “To what end?”
He turned away, shaking his head. “I don’t know, but,” he squeezed the steering wheel, “my gut is telling me we’ve taken the bait. The running back feinted, and we bit on the juke. We,” he pretended to be hugging someone, “wrapped our arms around nothing but thin air.”
While the women discussed his hypothesis, Hardy stared at a hotel out his window, his mind going over Pushkin’s last words: I will strike down the shepherds…and the sheepdogs will scatter. His eyes narrow, Hardy scanned the scenery on his side of the SUV. Sheepdogs…sheepdogs. Who are the sheepdogs? And who shepherds them? Who are the shepherds? He strummed his fingers on the steering wheel. A second later, he heard the tail end of Cruz’s question, posed to the team.
“…in Texas, then what’s going on there that’s so important?”
Hardy whipped his head around to face her.
The women stopped talking and regarded him.
His mouth agape, he lifted a finger. “Where did Jameson say he was going…for the meeting with the Joint Chiefs?”
Charity was the first to reply. “Waco…Waco, Texas.”
“And you said you got a hit on Kosolov in…”
“Tyler, Texas.”
He faced Cruz. “That’s your neck of the woods. How far apart are the two?”
Looking away, she envisioned a map of her home state and came back to him. “I’d say no more than three hours by car.”
Hardy pivoted in his seat to see Charity. “Did Jameson happen to say what the meeting was about?”
“No, but he did say…” she shut her eyes and tapped her lips with a forefinger. Her eyes popping open, “He,” she pointed at the driver, “said he would be attending an outdoor ceremony, a special joint graduation ceremony for cadets of the five branches of the military. The Joint Chiefs were to give commencement addresses.”
Cruz barely shook her head at him. “Hardy, you don’t think they’re the targets, do you?”
“Follow me on this.” He stared at the dashboard and gathered his thoughts. “What if the sheepdogs Pushkin was referring to were the men and women of the United States armed forces? They protect the people of this nation. And the shepherds…are those who lead them.”
Dahlia rocked forward and aimed a finger at his pocket, imagining the paper scrap inside. “That would explain the ballistics chart. They could be planning to assassinate the Joint Chiefs, using snipers.” She glimpsed Charity and Cruz before eyeing Hardy. “Pushkin never planned on getting caught. The people he made contact with at the mall…were supposed to carry on with their assignments.”
Hardy started the vehicle and ran the gearshift to ‘D,’ before facing Cruz. “Call Jameson and fill him in on this. Convince him to get the Joint Chiefs to call off the ceremony.” He shifted his gaze toward Dahlia. “See if you can keep Cherry’s jet on the tarmac for us. We’re heading back there now.”
Dahlia produced her mobile.
Hardy peeled out of the Subway parking lot and sped down the road, toward the airport. He observed Charity’s reflection in the rearview mirror. “Cherry?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know the venue for the graduation ceremony?”
“I’m pretty sure it was at a local high school…something about involving the community. I can find out. Why?”
“Get me everything you can on the surrounding landscape; buildings,” he lifted fingers with each new item, “hills…lines of sight, anything with a line of sight.”
She nodded. “Got it.”
“Oh, and find out where the Joint Chiefs will be seated, and from where they’ll be giving their speeches too.”
“Okay.” Charity pecked away at the keyboard.
Her cell phone pressed to the right side of her face, Cruz looked his way. “You do realize that all of this is based on a dying man’s last words, don’t you,” she waited a beat, “versus physical proof of a terror attack on our nation’s power grid?” She slowly shook her head. “Not sure how I’m going to sell the director on that longshot.”
Mulling over this new plot, Hardy saw her point of view. He pursed his lips and squinted at the traffic ahead. “Tell him…longshots are what this team does best.”
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
.
Chapter 33: Find it…End it
4:11 p.m.
Waco, Texas
“So what you’re saying is,” Marine Corps General Wesley McIntosh scratched his chin with the back of his hand, “you want us to back out of this graduation ceremony...based on a dying man’s last words, and some numbers scribbled onto a piece of paper...taped to the bottom of a coffee cup?” The man stayed behind after his colleagues had left, after declining Hardy’s request.
Standing near the high school football field’s goal post in the east end zone, Hardy exchanged glances with Cruz, who was on his right. In his head, he heard her voice from earlier, echoing the general’s sentiment. After glimpsing Director Jameson, across from him, and on McIntosh’s right, Hardy observed the Commandant of the Marine Corps, whose bushy eyebrows were hiked as high as they would go. “Sir,” he wavered before letting out a short sigh, “I know how this sounds, but—”
“Then…” in his mid-sixties, in uniform, McIntosh was bald, except for a patch of gray hair around the back of his head, near his shirt collar. His numerous medals, from almost fifty years of Marine Corps service, adorned his lapels. “…you know we can’t, and we won’t, turn our backs on,” he half pivoted and thrust out a finger toward the fifty-yard line, and the folding chairs filled with cadets and proud family and friends, “the next generation of fine American soldiers.”
Hardy fixed his gaze on what the general was pointing at and slowly nodded. “I…I understand, sir.”
McIntosh dropped a hand onto the younger man’s shoulder. “You know I’m one of your biggest fans, Sergeant Hardy. You’ve brought great honor to the Corps.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The four-star general clenched Hardy’s upper arm. “Now if there’s a threat out there, find it…and end it.”
“Yes sir.”
The decorated veteran smacked the side of Hardy’s shoulder and walked away to join his fellow military leaders.
Dahlia and Charity stepped forward and entered the circle, flanking their boss.
Eyeing the back of McIntosh’s head, Hardy planted hands on his hips and huffed, his shoulders sagging a bit.
Jameson noted his male counterpart’s posture. “They’re proud men. They’ve seen action. They’re not going to turn tail and run. I told you this might happen when you asked to speak with them.”
Hardy barely nodded. “So…so what now, sir?”
Jameson aimed a thumb over his shoulder. “You heard the man. Find the threat…and end it.” He spied his watch. “You’ve got forty-five minutes before the ceremony starts.” He gave each of the women a long look. “Get to it.” He paused. “Now if you’ll excuse me, the organizers of this event want to do an impromptu walk-through.” He turned around.
“Dad?” Taking a step toward her father, Dahlia reached for him, but quickly retracted her arm.
He faced her.
After gazing beyond his shoulder, at the front row of chairs, where he would be sitting with the Joint Chiefs, she bit her lower lip and regarded him. “Keep your head down.”
Jameson smiled at his daughter, “You too,” before making his way across the football field.
Hardy observed his teammate. “He’ll be fine, Dahlia.”
She stared at the man, who had raised her, who had recently come back into her life after several years of estrangement. “You don’t know that. At five hundred meters, if the sniper is off by even a fraction of a mil—” her chest heaved.
“I do know…” Hardy nudged her with his elbow, and she looked up at him, “because we’re going to get the shooter—or shooters—before they can pull the trigger.”
Dahlia flashed a disappearing smile, swallowed and cleared her throat. A second later, she set her jaw and pressed her lips together. “Damn straight we will. But where do we start?” She held her hands out at her sides and rotated her upper body. “There have to be a dozen buildings with direct lines of sight into the stadium. We can’t cover all of them.”
“We don’t have to. During the flight,” he nodded at Charity, “Cherry got a bird’s eye view of the lay of the land…via her computer.” He pointed. “Every viable structure to the north has south-facing windows. A sniper wants the sun at his back.”
Cruz tipped her head backward and rolled her eyes toward the sky. “It’s completely overcast.”
He lifted a finger at her. “They wouldn’t have known the weather in advance…for sure. They would’ve had to assume today would be a sunny day.”
Dahlia dipped her forehead toward the buildings to the north. “So all those are out.”
Hardy nodded before motioning toward the west. “That leaves us with those five; three of which are at least a thousand meters away. So if we’re going by the numbers on that scrap of paper—”
“Five and six hundred meters.”
“Exactly.” He made a horizontal ‘peace sign,’ his fingers pointing at two, side-by-side structures. “Cherry discovered that those two apartment buildings are roughly six hundred yards away…right in the sweet spot. And the shooter, or shooters, would have the sun at their backs.”
“That’s a lot of apartments to search in forty,” Cruz glimpsed her watch, “three minutes.”
“We only have to worry about the upper floors, the ones with sight lines to the front row of seats. Dahlia, you take the one on the left.” He swung a thumb between Cruz and himself. “We’ll clear the other one, since it has more units. Start with the vacant apartments on the top floor and work your way down.”
Dahlia nodded her head.
“I want sitreps every ten minutes.”
She nodded again.
“Or sooner if you find something. And people,” he met her and Cruz’s gaze. “If you have the shot…take it.”
“What about me?”
Hardy faced Charity. “You’re going to be my eyes on the ground.” He pointed toward the parking lot. “Go back to the vehicle and get the binoculars. Take them,” he motioned toward the enclosure above the bleachers, “to the press box and keep scanning the east-facing windows of those two buildings.”
“What am I looking for?”
“Anything that doesn’t look normal to you. If these people are professionals, I doubt you’ll see a gun barrel sticking out of a window, but you never know. If you come across something unusual, guide us to the right apartment.”
“Okay.”
“Any questions?” He received headshakes from the women. “Then let’s move out.”
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
.
Chapter 34: Minutes
39 minutes until the graduation ceremony starts…
Bursting through the front door of the apartment building, Hardy and Cruz scanned the lobby before darting left, toward the front desk; behind the counter sat a heavyset elderly woman with curly gray hair. Further down her puffy nose rested blue spectacles. Anchored to each bow, a chain looped around the backside of her neck.
Noticing the commotion, the seventy-something woman eyed the two visitors over the top of her lenses. Her upper body twitched when she barked, “Where’s the fire?”
Hardy split apart a wallet and showed her his FBI credentials. “Are you the manager?”
She tipped her head back and examined the badge through her eyeglasses. “What’s this about?”
He gripped his cred pack tighter and shoved the leather bifold closer to her face. “Are…you…the manager?”
“Well you don’t have to be rude.” She placed her pen on the desk. “This new generation is always in such a hurry. They never take the time to—”
“Ma’am!”
She looked up at him.
“We’re here to stop a terror attack.”
Her eyes widened.
“We need your help.”
She leaned away from him. “A terror attack…here?”
Hardy stowed his creds. “Now,” he placed flat hands on the counter and inclined toward her, “are…you…the manager of this building?”
“Uh,” she glanced around the lobby, “yes, yes I am.”
“What’s your name, ma’am?”
“LuAnn…LuAnn Patterson.”
“Ms. Patterson, I need two master keys to all the apartments in here. And I need them now.”
Using the counter for support, LuAnn slid off the pivoting stool and shuffled toward a back room, her shoulders rocking side to side with each labored step.
Watching the manager disappear from sight, Hardy made a fist and checked his watch—4:22. After another twenty seconds had passed, “Screw this,” he skirted around the barrier.
“Hardy.” Cruz followed him.
He entered the room and nearly bowled over LuAnn. “I apologize for my generation’s impatience, but I really need those—”
She held out two keys.
He snatched them, “Thank you,” and whirled around. “Which units are vacant?” He put a hand on Cruz’s chest and gently pushed her backward, out of the room. “Ms. Patterson, I need you to come with us and show us exactly where…” he turned around and waited several seconds before the manager waddled into the lobby, leaned forward and massaged her knee. In his mind, he cursed. She’s not going to be any help. He lifted his chin at her. “You have a cell phone?”
