Kill on Command (15 page)

Oscar examined Klein’s phone and saw a handful of email addresses.

“Which one is Waters?”

“The address is random.  The phone will send it to a random address.  Waters has a key that tells him where to log in.”

Oscar paused and gazed out the window.  He figured he had another ten minutes of this and then he needed to split.  He looked at the bloody mess under the chair and the blood in the hall.  “Oh, well,” he thought to himself.

“How many men like me did you create?  Create?  Is that the right word for it?”  Oscar asked.

“Fifteen.”

“Fifteen?”

“Yes, but all of them are dead but you and one other guy.”

“Who is that?”

“I don’t know.  Everything is done in silos,” Klein answered, trying to keep at least one scrap of information way from him.  Klein was part of the project from the beginning and knew most of the details of the program.

“You had better come up with a better answer.”

Todd Klein was silent.  Oscar once again took the knife and slammed it down into Klein’s thigh. 

Klein screamed as Oscar twisted the knife embedded in his leg.

Oscar knew the other survivor of the program would have made some nasty enemies and most likely, those people would want retribution.  That presented an opportunity for him.  He was certain these people would put a handsome bounty on his counterpart’s head.

He

“Garrison!  Sean Garrison!”

“There you go.  That was not so hard.
  Tell me more about Mr. Garrison.  I think I would like to meet him.” 

III

Waters’ Clean-up Crew

UPMC

Inside the hospital, the Pittsburgh SWAT team
had arrived.  Brian had radioed and told them it was clear, but the team was taking no chances.  After Sandy and Sean left, Michelle collapsed.  The blood from the slain Marines covered most of the floor.  Brian lifted her up and walked through the blood in the cleats, leaving odd tracks in the gore.  He carried Michelle into the next room and placed her on an empty bed.  Lucy had returned and was trying to calm everyone while also doing a headcount.  She did not see the other nurse, Martha.  “I hope she’s OK,” she thought to herself.

The SWAT team burst onto the floor via the exits.  Brian held up his badge as two officers approached him, weapons aimed at his head.  They really did not care what he was holding.

“I’m a cop!  I called you!” he shouted impatiently.  They didn’t immediately respond, continuing to search the floor.  Repeatedly, the team screamed “clear”.  The SWAT team leader walked into Sean’s room.

“Jesus!  What happened here?” he asked leaning over, examining the bodies.

Brian was silent.

Another SWAT member entered the room, followed by homicide detective Barry Willis.  He pulled on gloves.  He was decked out in black pants, a red golf shirt and looked ready to hit the links.  No tweed for this guy.  His clubs, no doubt were in the car.  He looked at Brian and the SWAT team leader.

“Get out.” 

Brian and the SWAT guys ignored him.

“I was sleeping in the chair when I heard two shots and saw these two guys lying on the floor.  A woman, 5’5” or so with brown hair grabbed my friend and took off,” Brian explained.  He was not sure why he lied.  Protecting Sean?

Willis did not respond.  He knelt down and examined the two bodies.  He had a telescopic rod, much like an old car antenna.  He lifted Bob’s sleeve.  A small tattoo peeked out.  A winged skull.  The SWAT leader bent over and studied the tattoo.

“I know that tattoo.  It’s a FORCE RECON tat.  That guy is, or was a Marine.  Looking at his buddy, I would guess he was one too.  They are real bad-asses.  Whoever took them down was good.  Very good,” he explained, without being asked.  Brian shuttered as Willis stood up.

“You want to be a detective now?” he said looking at the man dressed in all black with an automatic weapon in his hand.  The SWAT leader looked him over.

“You mean looking like a pussy, playing cop?  No thanks,” he said to Willis, turned and walked out.  Brian followed him out

“Hey, thanks for getting here as fast as you did.  Don’t let Willis bother you, he’s a dick. I’m Brian Ippolito,” Brian said, extending his hand.  The SWAT leader shook his hand and removed his helmet.

“No problem.  You said this was a woman?” he said, squinting.

“Yeah.  Tell me about these RECON guys.”

“They are tough bastards.  They don’t die easily.  I saw them from time to time when I was in the Corps.”

“You one?”  Brian asked.

“I was a Marine, but not RECON.  I was a MP.  Right before I left, we broke up a brawl between five Navy punks and these two RECON sergeants.  They beat the Navy guys to a pulp and it took five of us to get them under control.  I thought they were going to kill us all.”

Brian remained silent.  He knew the woman was one of the most frightening people he had ever seen.  She knew who he was.  She knew Michelle.  She obviously knew Sean.  Sean knew her, or thought he did.  Who was she?

“Like I said, whoever took these two down was fast, smart and very, very well trained.  He looked at Brian and his bloody cleats.  “I hope they find your friend.”

Police were swarming all over the hospital floor.  Lucy was tending to Michelle.   Brian saw what looked like two pilots accompanied by two uniformed officers.  They spoke to Willis.  Willis looked over and pointed at Brian.  Brian hesitantly joined then.

“You want to tell me the truth?”  Willis asked.  Brian stood there.  He did not answer. 

“These two say the woman didn’t have brown hair.  She wasn’t short.  She was a six foot blonde.  Really, the exact opposite of your description,” he said, getting in Brian’s face.

“It all happened pretty fast,” Brian answered, clinging to a lie that was slipping away from him.

“Oh, these guys also tell me that your friend flew off in their helicopter.  You want to explain that?”

“What?”  Brian gasped.  His head was spinning.  He looked over at the room where Michelle was sitting.  He had to talk to her. 

“Anything else?”  Willis asked, turning back to the pilots.

“I thought she was going to kill us both.  I thought we were done for,” one of the pilots said.  The other guy looked at Brian.

“Oh, yeah, it looked like your buddy was having a great time.  It seemed as if they knew each other.”  Both turned and walked away, happy to be getting out of there.

“I’m not done with you,” Willis said to Brian, who was walking away.  Brian slipped into the room where Michelle was lying down.

In the lobby of the hospital, Bill and Bob’s back up were moving towards the elevator.  One of them was on the phone.

“Yes, they both are gone.  She killed her team.  Looks like she was waiting for them,” one agent said.  Dozens of police officers rushed past them.  Both men had FBI badges hanging from their necks.  “She took Number Two.”

“Damn it!  How did this happen?  You were to eliminate both of them!  I think we can call him Garrison now!”  Robert Waters shouted. 

“It gets worse.  Number Two, I mean Garrison, hijacked a LifeFlight helicopter and flew it off the roof.  Police chatter has them heading south with him at the controls.”  There was no answer on the other end - just breathing.  There was a long pause.  The agent stood like a statue.  His partner was watching him, anxiously.

“You both are to go upstairs and control the crime scene.  We cannot let the local guys take those two bodies.  It will look pretty bad if they run the prints and find that these guys actually died years ago.  I will send another team over to take the bodies.  When they arrive, you head south.  I will have a bearing on Garrison.”  Waters had a third team on standby that he would scramble in a waiting Blackhawk.

“What about the hospital cameras?” the agent asked.

“We are already in their system,” Waters informed them and hung up.  He leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling.  The desk in front of him was devoid of any personal mementoes - his job was his life.  Robert Waters was still fairly young – in his mid-40s.  He had a slight build and he already had on a blue suit and blue shirt.  Some days he felt like he slept in a suit.  Like “Sandy” he was Ivy League educated and entered government service right out of school. 

Now, he was going to have to make a call.  His program was shut down, but there were three loose ends.  He was confident that he would eliminate Sandy and Sean Garrison within the day.  They were alone, without support.  It was really too bad.  He had an eye for Sandy.  Number One, Oscar Pasco, was still out there as well.  He had no idea where he was.  Pasco, the most dangerous of all, had gone rogue last week, brutally murdering his handler.  None of the fail-safes had worked.   He had total recall.  Garrison could not be far behind.  Waters thought there was little chance Pasco would come after him.   Oscar Pasco was motivated by money.  If there was no money to be had, Pasco was not a danger.  He looked at the phone in his hand and then changed his mind.  He would check in when he had progress to report.  It was early Sunday morning. 

“Why can’t these things happen between nine and five on a weekday?”  Waters said to himself.

★★★

The agent put his phone in his breast pocket and they both walked over to UPMC’s bank of elevators.

Upstairs, Brian tried to talk with Michelle.  She was still out.  He checked down the hall.  Two serious men in suits were approaching Detective Willis.  Brian slipped out of the room just as one of the agents flashed his federal credentials.

“We are taking over here,” the agent announced.  Their backs were to Sean’s room.  Brian wanted to get another look at the two Marines.  He slipped into the room and looked around.  The blood on the floor appeared to be drying.  He saw a drinking glass on Sean’s hospital tray.  He picked it up and quickly bent down.  He took Bob’s hand, removed the latex glove and pressed the hand to the glass. He wanted the prints.  He placed the glove in his shorts as he heard the agents in the hallway.  He stuck the cup in the waistband of his shorts and pulled his t-shirt down over it.  He started for the door and came face to face with one of the agents, who looked Brian right in the eyes.  Brian had seen the look before.  He didn’t like it any better now than he had an hour ago when Sandy pointed a gun at him.

“Get out,” the agent demanded.

“Sure,” Brian replied, he was happy to get the hell out of there.

The agent watched Brian walk down the hall.  He knew who Brian was.  His partner was finishing berating Detective Willis.   Willis shook his head and walked away.  The agent walked over to his partner who was standing in front of the door to Sean’s room.

“She really did a number on these two idiots.  We can’t underestimate her,” he said.  The other guy nodded.

“Ippolito was poking around in here.”  Both men had a file on all of Sean’s known associates.  Nothing in Sean’s life was secret any longer.

“He get anything?”

“No.  I scared the shit out of him,” he said matter of factly.  At the end of the hall the elevator opened and two men in coveralls rolled two gurneys down the hall and into Sean’s room.  Wearing gloves and covers on their shoes, they did not speak to the other two agents.  They opened a body bag, picked up Bob and placed him in the bag.  They zipped it up.  They moved the gurney out and brought the second one in, repeated the procedure with Bill.  Upon leaving the room, they removed their shoe covers and dropped them on top of the body bags.  They got on the elevator and headed to the basement.  From there, Bill and Bob were loaded onto a van.  Their bodies would never be recovered.

The two agents looked at Detective Willis who was staring at them. 

“Willis, another team from our office will be here momentarily to collect evidence and clean up this mess.  I assume you know how to seal off this area?”

“I would like to have some sort of follow-up,” Willis said to both agents.  They ignored him and walked to the elevator. Brian watched them from behind the nurse’s station desk.  To Brian’s relief, they did not make eye contact.  Brian placed the cup in an evidence bag.  When they turned the corner, Brian strode towards Willis and held up the bag.

“What’s that?”  Willis asked.

“The prints from one of the dead guys,” Brian said, handing the bag to Willis.  He kept the glove in another bag.  Something was really wrong here and Brian was determined to get to the bottom of it.  In the meantime, he would follow procedure and let Willis handle it.  Besides, it looked like Willis was so pissed-off that he would run this down just to throw it in the FBI’s face.

“Good work.” Willis took the bag and headed for the elevator.

The agents were just getting on the elevator when one of them saw Brian’s reflection in the ceiling mounted mirror, the same mirror Sandy had used to spot Bob and Bill.  He saw Brian hand something to the detective.  It was clear he taken something from the room. Willis was approaching the elevator, but he let the door close in Willis’ face.

“We have a problem,” the agent said to his partner. 

“What?”

“Ippolito passed something to that jack-ass detective.”

“We were told to clean this up.  We’ll clean it up,” he said to his partner.  The elevator opened, they stepped out and stood in the lobby for a moment.  The other elevator opened.  Willis stepped out.  He said a couple words to a patrolman and hit the down button.  He was heading for the basement.