Echo of War (11 page)

“Yes.”

There were a few seconds of silence, then Coates said, “Gunston had a dead drop in Dinard; that's why he was in St. Malo, he was trying to set a meeting with her. Whether he'd already checked the drop, we don't know.”

“It's a place to start,” Tanner replied. “Where is it?”

It was behind a loose brick in an alley off Rue des Lilas.

In his slouch hat, glasses, and windbreaker, Tanner looked like any other middle-aged businessman on his way to work. It was just past seven in the morning and the streets were mostly deserted, with only a few delivery trucks and shop owners visible. He reached Rue Lilas, crossed the street, bought a paper from a machine, then slipped into the alley. The brick was exactly where Coates said it would be. Tanner slipped it free, palmed the square of paper inside, replaced the brick, then turned and walked out of the alley.

Forty minutes later, back at the hotel, Tanner handed Cahil the note, then shrugged off his disguise. “Well?” Briggs asked.

“It's her. The Lorient docks, midnight, day after tomorrow.”

Erbs Mill,
Pennsylvania

Following confirmation of Selmani's appearance at Bob's Boat Rental, events moved quickly.

Within hours of Deputy Lewen's report, Oliver, McBride, Gene Scanlon, and a full squad of HRT descended on the town of Quarryville, about nine miles east of Erbs Mill, where they were met by contingents from the FBI's Pittsburgh Field Office, the Pennsylvania State Police, the Lancaster Sheriff's Department, and, finally, arriving in a black Lincoln Town Car, Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor. In the space of two hours, Quarryville's population of eighteen thousand had increased by thirty souls.

In the town hall Oliver and McBride sat at the conference table and watched the attendees file into the room and take in their respective seats. The murmuring grew until it became a cacophony of overlapping voices.

The Quarryville police chief, a laconic man of sixty, had long ago retreated into his office wearing a “let ‘em have their fun” smile. Conversely, Jerry Nester, the Erbs Mill chief of police, stood in the corner, his mouth agape. Rumor had obviously reached him that his little corner of the world was about to be overrun.

“Poor guy,” McBride said.

“He'll recover,” Oliver said. “Besides, before this is all over, he'll probably end up being the hero. He probably knows every nook and cranny of the Susquehanna. If Selmani's on his turf, he'll find him.”

“Then what's with the hordes? It's overkill, for god's sake.”

“It's CYA, Joe—Cover Your Ass. They're covering their asses by showing up and making sure we don't screw up, and I'm covering my ass by inviting them so they can say they're doing their duty.”

“God save us from politics.”

“Yep, but with a case like this, our little invasion wasn't going to stay secret for long. Better to get this out of the way now so we go get the son of a bitch.” Oliver looked around. “Well, I think the gang's all here. Time to play diplomat.” He stood up. “Can I have your attention please … Everyone, your attention, please.” Once all the voices had gone silent and all eyes were on him, Oliver said, “My name is Collin Oliver. I'm with the FBI. We're a little pressed for time, so I'm going to be brief.

“In case you don't know why we're here, a few days ago, the wife of Jonathan Root, former director of the CIA, was kidnapped from their home in Maryland. We've tracked one of the suspects to this area. Whether he has Amelia Root, we don't know, but at the very least he may have information about his accomplices and Mrs. Root's possible whereabouts. We don't believe our suspect is a threat to the general public, nor do we believe he knows we've tracked him here.

“Once we've captured him and recovered Mrs. Root, the agencies in this room will receive the lion's share of the credit. Whatever you've heard about the FBI swooping in, wreaking havoc, kicking shins, then grabbing all the glory is crap.” Oliver smiled, then added, “At least in this case.”

There was general laughter.

“I don't give a damn about credit. What I do give a damn about is getting our guy and returning Mrs. Root to her husband. Everybody clear on that?”

“And if you mess it up?” one of the State Troopers asked. “What then?”

“Then it's on us—on me. Now for that bad news: This is an FBI operation. I'm not going to keep each and every one of you informed of our every move; I'm not going to brief everyone on every detail of this case; I'm not going to allow your people to beat the bushes looking for this guy. And finally, I am not going to tolerate anyone jeopardizing either this woman's life or this subject's capture.”

Oliver paused for a long three seconds and scanned the room. “Questions?”

The lieutenant governor stood. “You've got a lot of balls, Oliver, coming in here—”

“Sir, if you'd like to talk this over with my boss, he's easy to find.” Oliver pulled out his cell phone, and laid it on the table. “Press one on the speed dial; it'll take you straight to the director of the FBI. I guarantee you two things: One, he will have already talked to your boss; and two, your conversation will be brief.”

Looking as though he'd been slapped, the lieutenant governor sat back down.

“I'll say it again: As long as it's ongoing, this is an FBI case. When it's over, it'll be trotted in front of the media as a superb example of local, state, and federal cooperation—with the emphasis on state and local. If that's not good enough for everyone here, too damned bad.”

Again Oliver paused, scanned the room, and said, “Any more questions?”

No one spoke.

“Okay, then. Thanks for coming. If all goes well, we should be out of your hair in a day or so.”

The attendees stood up and began shuffling out, some muttering to one another, others casting glances back at Oliver. Once the room was empty save Chief Nester and the Lancaster county sheriff, both of whom Oliver had asked to stay behind, McBride turned to Oliver. “Collin, just when I think I got you pegged, you surprise me.”

Oliver shrugged sheepishly. “What can I say? Sometimes you gotta play the bastard.” He turned to the two cops. “What I told the rest of them—it wasn't meant for you. I just needed to clear the deck a little, you know?”

Both men nodded.

‘If we're going to catch this guy, it'll be because you and your people know the area, its citizens, its patterns. Our subject's an outsider; somebody will notice that.”

“What do you want from us?” asked Nester.

“How far could that pontoon boat have gotten by now?”

“Give or take, thirty miles either way.”

“Between the two of you, how many people can you put in the field?”

The two cops exchanged glances, then the Lancaster sheriff said, “Whatdya think, Jerry? Eighteen, twenty?”

“ 'Bout that.”

“And I've got about the same,” said Oliver. “That gives us about forty. Here's what I'm thinking: We pair them up—one agent, one local—put them in plainclothes, then canvass every launch, dock, and camping site within thirty miles. Somebody has to have seen our guy. Thoughts?”

The sheriff nodded. “I like it.”

“Me, too,” said Chief Nester. “Sundown's in about two hours. We can get all the fishermen coming off the river. That's a lot of eyes.”

“Good,” Oliver said. “Let's get to it.”

“One question,” said Nester. “Now that we're all friends and such, how about the real scoop? I mean, how dangerous is this guy?”

“Three days ago he and his cohorts murdered four security guards—shot each one execution style in the back of the head. Does that answer your question?”

“Oh, lord.”

“Tell your people if they see him, stay away. If this guy gets even a whiff of trouble, we could have a mess on our hands.”

As Nester predicted, their first tip came twenty minutes after dusk from a pair of fishermen who'd spent the afternoon jigging for bass near Bair Island. “They're sure,” the chief told Oliver and McBride. “It was a pontoon boat, one guy at the wheel.”

“And it was coming downstream, not up?” Oliver asked.

“Yep. He came around the bend at House Rock Creek doing a good eight knots. They were pissed; he had water slopping over their gunwales.”

“I don't get it,” McBride said. “If it's him, he's had all day to get a head start. Why come back?” And then a reason occurred to him. He glanced at Oliver. “You don't think …”

Nester said, “What?”

“Maybe he dumped her,” Oliver explained.

“Aw, shit.”

“Did they see where he was headed?”

“Duncan's Thumb,” Nester answered. “It's a little spit of land that sticks out between Reed Creek and Brubaker Creek; it forms kind of an inlet. Last they saw, he was heading for the mouth of it. That don't make much sense, though.”

“Why?” asked McBride.

“After about a mile it dead ends, narrows down to nothin'. Hell, with a pontoon, he wouldn't get more than a couple hundred yards before he'd be stuck.”

Oliver grabbed the map from the table and started unfolding it. “How far is it?”

It was fully dark when Oliver and McBride pulled their rented Lumina to a stop behind Nester's cruiser. In the driver's seat Oliver pressed the dome-light overide and they climbed out. Behind them a pair of GMC vans, headlights dark, pulled up, gravel crunching softly under the tires. Without a word, Scanlon and his team began piling out and unloading equipment.

Though they were only two miles upriver from Bob's Boat Rental, it had taken forty minutes of backtracking and circling to reach the spot. The forest bordering the Susquehanna's eastern shore was thick and the roads weren't as much roads as they were dirt tracts. Even Nester, a lifelong resident of Erbs Mill, had to stop several times to consult his map under the glow of his dome light.

A half mile to their west lay the bank of the inlet and, according to the report they'd received just before leaving, a dilapidated fishing shack Which an unidentified man was seen entering earlier that afternoon.

Whether it was Hekuran Selmani or not was anyone's guess, but the fluttering in McBride's belly was telling him they were close. Whether that was imagination or premonition he couldn't tell. The report of Selmani's mysterious trip upriver before returning to Duncan's Thumb troubled him, but if it had been a dump job why would Selmani have come back? No, McBride told himself, if she were dead, he'd be on the run, not holed up in a shack.

Now outside the car's air-conditioned interior, the heat enveloped McBride like an electric blanket. The humidity hovered in the mid-nineties and he could feel the damp clinging to him. Cicadas buzzed in the brush along the tract. He felt the sting of a mosquito bite on his cheek and slapped at it.

Walking up, Nester tossed him a can of bug repellant. “Coat yourself. Without it an hour from now you'll be one big welt.”

“Thanks.”

Oliver stood staring at the tree line. “Please don't tell me we've got to chop our way through this,” he said to Nester.

“There's a trail around here somewhere; it should take us to the water. The bad news is, if you wanna reach the spit we've got two choices: wade across the inlet, or go upstream and pick our way through the swamp.”

Oliver had earlier assumed they would take a boat and put ashore on the other side of the peninsula, but Nester had advised against it: The fishing shack in question sat on a rise with an unobstructed view of the river. Unless Selmani were deaf and blind, they wouldn't get within fifty yards of the shack before being spotted.

Oliver asked McBride, “Gotta preference, Joe? Swamp or swim?”

“Whatever's got less mosquitos.”

“Better to wade,” Nester told them. “Unless your commando boys are gluttons for punishment, I'd steer clear of the swamp—it's just a good way to get ass-kicked before they even get there.”

Scanlon's commander walked up. “This swamp—would it give us a better approach on the shack?”

“A little, but if we're quiet it won't make much difference.”

“I say wade,” the HRT commander said.

Oliver nodded. “Whenever you're ready.”

After fifteen minutes of searching, Nester found the right trail and the group set out. McBride could see little in the darkness, but he could sense they were moving downhill into the river bottom. He kept one eye on the trail and another on the green glow of the chemlight one of the HRT men had clipped to the back of Nester's shirt. It hovered in the trees ahead of him, winking like a firefly.

After fifteen minutes they reached the inlet. McBride could hear the lapping of water and the croaking of frogs. The air was heavy with the tang of algae and something else McBride couldn't quite put his finger on.
Rotting something,
he thought.
Sun-baked dead fish.

Scanlon gestured for them to wait, then he and three HRT men continued to the water's edge, where they began loading their equipment onto a life raft they'd borrowed from the Erbs Mill Fire Department.

Crouching beside McBride, Oliver said, “Not just a job, it's an adventure.”

“Uh-huh. Damn, I hate mosquitos. If this turns out to be some dopehead using the shack to get high, I'm gonna be unhappy.”

“I don't think it is. Neither does Jerry.”

Nester said, “It's a regular stop on the game warden's route. Nobody's been in the shack for years.”

McBride said, “That still doesn't answer the big question: What's Selmani doing here? If she's dead, why stay? If he's still got her, why here? Why travel only a couple miles?”

“All good questions,” said Oliver. “We'll know soon enough.”

They watched as Scanlon and his team ferried the raft across the inlet. Once on the opposite bank, Scanlon disappeared into the foliage, then reappeared a few minutes later. At the double wink of his red-hooded flashlight, the rest of the HRT waded across then vanished into the underbrush. Another double red blink appeared.

“That's us,” McBride said, and started crawling toward the water's edge.

Nester put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Uh, when you get to the other side, you might wanna check yourselves,” he said.

“What for?” asked Oliver.

“Leeches. Best to get ‘em off quick before they get burrowed in too deep.”

McBride sighed heavily. “Mosquitos, leeches … better not be a dopehead.”

They were met by Scanlon, who helped each one climb up the muddy bank then waited with a patient grin as each one examined himself. Oliver won the overall leech count with thirteen, but McBride drew collective shivers as he plucked a fat one from what Nester delicately called “the giblets.”

They huddled around Scanlon who said, “Shack's about fifty yards to the east. We'll walk the first forty, then crawl the last ten. Haven't seen anybody yet, but there's light coming from one of the windows and we heard footsteps inside. Once we get into position, there's no talking unless you're mouth-to-ear. If you need something, double click on your transmit button; I'll come to you. Questions?”