Black Flagged (The Black Flagged Technothriller Series) (7 page)

"In Newport, a prominent businessman was found shot to death on his patio…local authorities report suspect in custody."

He didn't like the idea of a suspect in custody. He was pretty sure Sanderson wouldn't like it either.

He sifted through the favorites file again and examined the information.

"Muslim art trader slain outside of Mount Pleasant Home. Apparent close range shooting…"

"Couple killed in bizarre drive-by shooting, while walking at night in the Eastport subdivision of Annapolis. Killings shock neighbors, who describe Sa'id and Adia Faris as generous, peaceful members of their small community. No suspects in shooting…"

"Jibran Nazir's body was found by his wife outside of the entrance gate to their Hampton estate. The passenger side of Nazir's car was riddled with bullets, leaving him dead on the scene…"

Daniel clicked the mouse button on the next link.
"The link you have requested is inactive or no longer exists."

Someone is shutting this down quick
.

He quickly shuffled through two more links. Two more shootings, one a break-in at a Rye waterfront townhouse, husband and wife murdered; another in the upper west side of Manhattan, doorman and Asim Shareef executed just inside the lobby of an exclusive apartment building. Three out of the eight articles mentioned federal law enforcement involvement, which included the stabbing of Mohammed Ghani, on the driveway of his Shore Road residence in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.
Only one stabbing?
Interesting.

He entered several different search strings for the murder that concerned him the most. Nothing. The murder in Newport, Rhode Island, had been erased from the public's eye, which was an unsettling development. If the feds actually caught the killer, Daniel's life could unravel quickly. He softly pounded the keyboard tray with a closed fist.

He should have known better than to take the assignment, but he got lazy. He had enjoyed five great years with Jessica, finally settling into a "normal" life he could tolerate. He didn't take much pleasure in his job, but who did? He needed the normalcy and dullness of a civilian routine to suppress the urges fostered by Sanderson's programming.

He didn't want to start over again, so he took the job thinking that Sanderson would go away. Maybe he should have refused and taken the hard route. Vanish and rebuild with Jessica somewhere else. Maybe it didn't matter. It looked like either choice would have led to the same result. Sanderson was up to something big, and it was about to swallow them whole.

Daniel closed the internet browser and turned his attention to the files stacked up on his desk. He needed to maintain appearances for at least a few more hours, despite how very little he now cared about Zenith's overseas emerging markets.

Chapter Seven

9:26 a.m.

FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

Special Agent-in-Charge Sharpe stared up at the plasma-screen monitors in the task force operations center. The screens had changed very little over the course of the morning, and he was starting to feel despondent about the day's affairs. Eight separate crime scenes, and Sharpe had very little to show for their investigative progress. A few sets of partial footprints, scattered witness statements and a flurry of ballistics reports, which had so far told them nothing they couldn't determine with their own eyes. The victims were either knifed, shot in the face with a pistol at close range, or shot in the head with a sniper rifle from a longer range. It was pretty easy to tell the difference between the pistol and sniper kills; the pistol rounds left the heads intact.

"We don't have shit," he stated to Special Agent Mendoza, who had just entered the room with a stack of papers.

"We have one of the shooters," Mendoza said, joining Sharpe at the screens.

"And he hasn't said shit. We don't even know who he is, and we still haven't found his car. All we know about this guy is that he's pretty handy with a scoped Remington 700 rifle. I'm not even sure that advanced interrogation techniques would be effective with this guy," Sharpe said.

"Have you forwarded the request?" Mendoza said in a weak tone that betrayed the fact that he knew the answer already.

"That, my friend, is a slippery slope for someone at my pay grade. Carlisle is our best interrogator. He'll take the interrogation as far as he can without breaking the law. After that, someone else will have to decide how to proceed. I'm about to authorize Carlisle and Olson to suggest the possibility of a deal. Based on the lack of evidence we pulled from the other crime scenes, I have a feeling he didn't expect this little side trip. The mention of an immunity deal might soften him up a bit."

"It's all we have left at this point," Mendoza confirmed, placing the stack of papers on Sharpe's temporary workstation.

Sharpe nodded at the pile of papers. "More personnel requisition forms?"

"Yep. This should be the last of them. We now have most of the building working for us," he said, in hopes of eliciting a laugh, or at least a smile.

"We'll lose these agents just as quickly if we don't start to produce more than phantom footprints and muddled witness statements. I need to make some calls from my office," he said, grabbing the stack of papers.

The calls would be placed to the lead investigative agents at each crime scene, and he would condense their verbal reports for his final call to his immediate superior within the Terror Financing Operations Section, Associate Director Sandra Delgado. He imagined Agent Delgado would turn right around and call the Executive Assistant Director Fred Carroll, who had overall responsibility for the FBI's Counterterrorism Division. On and on the calls would go, rising up the chain of command, until Sharpe started the cycle over again less than an hour later. It was part of his job as special agent-in-charge of Task Force HYDRA.

Chapter Eight

9:38 a.m.

Cape Elizabeth, Maine

Special Agent Justin Edwards stood several feet away from Mohammed Ghani's body, staring out at a multi-million-dollar view of the Atlantic Ocean. An endless stretch of glimmering ocean, interrupted by an occasional lobster boat and a sparsely-inhabited island across Portland's shipping channel. He tried to imagine what the view would be like on the island, but his thoughts were interrupted by a cool, salty breeze that threatened his perfectly-coiffed hair. He barely heard Special Agent Margaret D'Angelo as she recapped what local law enforcement agency crime scene teams had determined.

"I'm sorry, I just can't get over this view," he said, and she paused with an impatient look on her face.

Edwards finally brought his attention back to Portland's resident FBI agent, the only agent permanently assigned to the local satellite office. He wondered whom she had pissed off to get stuck here, though he did like the water views in Maine. He could get used to sipping cocktails with the Atlantic in the backdrop, but he was years away from that dream. He came from a wealthy family, but had a major impediment to realizing this goal: health-nut parents who liked to dole out the cash for major milestones like college and law school, but not for general use by their children.

He tried to focus on D'Angelo, but found her uninteresting. She was attractive, in a middle-aged, married female kind of way, but certainly not Justin's type. Like most female agents, she dressed conservatively and put little effort, or money, into her hair. D'Angelo apparently hadn't even bothered to try this morning. Her hair was pulled back into some kind of "who gives a shit" bun, reserved for women who have simply given up.

"Please continue. Sorry," he said.

"Mr. Ghani's body was discovered last night at about ten thirty by a private security guard, who had been dispatched by a technician at the security company's centralized headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska," she said.

"Anything out of the ordinary with the security guard or the company?"

"Everything checks out so far. The company is one of the largest in the country, and the guard has been an employee of the company for twelve years. We still have him down at the Cape Elizabeth police station. The company dispatched him at the request of Mr. Ghani's wife, who hadn't heard from her husband that night."

"She's obviously not here?"

"No. She's been in Pakistan for the past few weeks, scheduled to return in early June. Apparently, he always takes her calls, and she got worried when he didn't answer last night," she said.

"No security camera?"

"Wishful thinking," she added.

He squatted down near the body, which was covered with a gray tarp, stenciled in black with "CE Police Dept." The covered body lay several feet from the driver's side of a previously sparkling white Mercedes convertible sedan. The convertible's tan ragtop was down, and the side of the white sedan was covered with thick, dark maroon stains, indicating a strong arterial spray pattern. Edwards could see similar dark splotches on the light tan driver's headrest and could imagine that the rest of the light-colored interior had been ruined by Mr. Ghani's blood.

A large pool of dried blood extended around the body in an oval shape, stretching toward the end of the small driveway that joined the circular drive. This small section of asphalt serviced the four-bay garage, and the Mercedes was in a position where it had either been purposely parked outside of the garage or had been stopped before making the turn into one of the bays. Edwards saw that the far garage bay door was open, and he looked back at the circular driveway, which was crammed with police vans, squad cars and SUVs. He saw a few of the ever-present SWAT officers standing near one of the oversized SUVs, cradling assault rifles. They were always looking for an excuse to dress up and parade around in their gear. At least they had their helmets off, though he could think of no conceivable reason why they would need to be carrying military-style weaponry on this estate.

He returned his attention to the garage bay door. "Anything out of order inside?"

"Not that anyone could tell. So far, the crime scene techs haven't found anything useful. Right now, they're focusing on the outside, looking for anything the killer might have left us while breaching the perimeter," said D'Angelo.

"Have they checked the seaside approach? You heard about Rhode Island, right?"

"Just that the guy there had been shot from a distance. Did they find a boat or something?" she said.

She obviously hadn't been brought into the circle on this one, and that was fine with Edwards. Sharpe didn't want to alert the rest of the terrorist network responsible for last night's murderfest and had imposed a media blackout. So far, only one internet article had been written about the suspect in custody, posted by a local Newport publication, and they had graciously agreed to remove it while the investigation proceeded. Edwards hadn't realized that the same information blackout applied to the rest of the FBI. This was exactly why he would never accept a posting like D'Angelo's. He couldn't stomach the concept of being an outsider.

"They need to give the seaside approaches the same attention as the perimeter fence. That's all I can say for now. What about the body and the car? Do they need to process this?" he said.

"No, they're finished here and in the house unless we get specific information regarding the residence," she said.

"Do you trust them? I have a team showing up in an hour."

"I have a close working relationship with the lead investigator and his team. They're competent, thorough, and I've used them before when other assets weren't available. This isn't the most complicated murder, but I understand the importance of this case," she said, and Edwards highly doubted she truly understood the implications.

"We'll have our own team talk to the locals that processed the body, then they'll take a quick look together. Looks pretty straightforward. The key here will be finding something to lead us back to the killer. Frankly, I'm not very hopeful."

"Aside from massive blood loss," he continued, tracing the wide swath of dried blood back to the circular drive, "what is the initial assessment for cause of death?"

"Mr. Ghani has a deep penetration wound at the front of his neck, slightly to the right, which severed his carotid artery. Anthony Boudreau, the forensics chief, said the wound indicated the work of a professional…possibly a sick one," she said.

"What did he mean by that?" Edwards said.

"Boudreau said the killer held the knife deep inside Ghani and scrambled things up pretty bad. He couldn't tell how big of a blade, but based on the tearing around the neck, he's pretty sure the killer fished it around for a while, which he thought was unusual," D'Angelo said.

"Boudreau has a lot of experience with cuts like this?" he said, not convinced that a Portland, Maine, based forensics guy would have the extensive experience to make this kind of assessment.

"He worked forensics in New York City for twenty-three years," she commented and paused. "Said the knife attack resembled one of several used by commandos or special forces to instantly disable sentries, but that this particular method was not typically their first choice. He said the most common surprise knife attack put the blade through the back of the victim's neck, high up near the skull, which instantly severed the spinal cord at its highest point. Instant shutdown. Scrambled the brain, too, if the knife passed into the skull."

"Sounds wonderful. What's wrong with Mr. Ghani's wound?"

"Nothing, really. This cut kills just as effectively, but doesn't always sever the spinal cord. If it does, the cord is cut below the entry wound. It's an extremely painful death, if the shock doesn't kill you instantly. Boudreau said the Russian Spetsnaz specialized in this one. He also thinks this one twisted the knife around more than necessary. I wouldn't want to run into the person that pulled this off," she finished.