Ripper (30 page)

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

As Collins ran the paint roller across the den’s wall, he tuned with a sneer and looked over at a very messy but very satisfied Alice Hamilton.

“No wonder the senator didn’t like you much. You purposefully plied me with drink, and then the next thing
I know I’m painting, and I’m doing most of the work.”

“Yes, and soon I’m going to go into that backyard of mine and then grill you a steak, Mr. Collins.” Alice looked up after she poured more light-green paint into the pan she was using just to see if she got a rise out of Jack by calling him mister. But Collins just kept painting. Badly, but he kept painting nonetheless.

“You’re not going to
get to me, you know?” he said as he almost fell over when he tried to get more paint on his roller. “This is only the first day of my retirement, so my mind is still strong young lady.”

Alice looked up at Jack and smiled. She lay the paint brush down inside of the pan of paint and then walked over to where Jack was trying his hardest to apply paint to the roller, but every time he tried he would
almost fall face first in the opposite direction. Alice took the roller and then placed it in the pan at Jack’s feet. “Come on soldier boy, I think you’re ready for that steak now.”

“See, I knew if I did a bad-enough job you would call an end to this … this farce.”

“That’s right Jack, I’m surrendering,” she said as she guided him through the now empty house and toward the back sliding door.
“Let’s get some air, and then I’ll bring you out some coffee.”

“Air? Yes, air would be nice,” he said as she placed him not too gently into one of the chaise lounges.

“Okay, just stay put and entertain yourself for a few minutes.”

“And how do I do that, my dear Mrs. Hamilton?”

“Hum ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’ or something.”

An expression of confusion came over Jack’s face. “I … I … don’t know
Row, row, row … row, row … your boat.”

Alice wanted to answer, but she had to turn away or she would have lost it right there. She went back into the kitchen, trying her best not to laugh out loud at Jack’s butchering of the children’s song title. When she made it into her kitchen, which she hadn’t really used since the death of Garrison Lee, her cell phone rang. If it was someone public, they
would have called on her landline. But since it was her cell phone she knew it was someone at the Event Group calling from the complex.

“Hello,” she said, knowing who it was before the words came through the atmosphere.

“Uh, hello, Alice?” came the voice full of worry and concern.

“Hello my dear. And before you worry yourself too much, he’s here. A little plastered right now, but I can also
attribute that to painting, and not just my twenty-year-old whiskey. He’s out in the back trying to sing.”

“Thank God,” Sarah said on the other end. “He’s not answering his phone and I—”

“Stop it now. You listen to what I have to say. My words may be a little bit slurred, but you should understand them well enough. Jack needs time. I don’t know what happened in the field, but I know something
inside of him snapped. I’ve seen it before, Sarah. Garrison resigned no less than fifteen different times. He and Jack are a lot alike you know?”

“That’s why I knew where I had to call. Look, Alice, I have to give our field report to a group of recalls from the CDC in a few minutes, but do you think afterward I can stop by? I won’t bug him about his decision. I just need to see him.”

“I would
be angry if you didn’t come by, young lady. He needs you now, not an old woman who knows songs he doesn’t know.”

“What?” Sarah asked.

Alice turned away from the open sliding glass window where she heard Jack trying to recall the words to “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” but he kept going off track with a mixture of that song and the theme from
Gilligan’s Island
.

“Nothing, I’ll see you when you get
here.” Alice hung up the phone and then as her eyes moved away from her backyard, she caught a glimpse of the only portrait she had on her walls. It was of her and Garrison Lee fifty years before when they took a field trip to Egypt. She saw the angry look on his face for having to be still for so long just for a portrait, but it was the only thing she ever asked of him, so he did it, complaining
all the way. She smiled at the picture of herself and the one-eyed ex-senator and former general in the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, and then she looked at Jack out on the back porch.

“Just like him.”

THE GOLD CITY PAWN SHOP
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

The man inside the Tahoe was parked across the busy street. The Black Team had been out front watching for the better part of thirty minutes.
Smith never uttered a word but had held up his hand several times when one of the three men inside the Tahoe attempted to ask a question. His eyes never left the pawn shop.

As far as he could discern it was a busy place of business. He saw very little out of the ordinary. Smith looked to his left and the field supervisor he had chewed out earlier. He looked at the man’s hand and then smiled to
himself. “Give me your ring and watch,” he said as he held out his large hand.

The man next to him was about to ask a very stupid question, especially stupid considering how his day had gone thus far with the director of the Black Teams. Instead of doing the stupid thing, he removed his watch and his wedding ring and gave them to Smith. He would have asked why he didn’t use his own watch, or
his own wedding ring, but stopped short when he saw how much more expensive the man’s wedding ring was compared to his, and with the Rolex he wore, well, he decided not to break the bond of trust he was now trying to develop.

“Thank you. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Smith left the large Chevrolet and then waited for a city bus to pass before he sprinted across the street and entered the Gold
City Pawn Shop without a second’s hesitation.

The agent from the Las Vegas district watched Smith go and then turned away and looked out of the side window. He knew the man as the most ruthless person he had ever met in his life. He had been recruited by Smith right out of the army, claiming he and others were about to rebuild an elite paramilitary unit that would work closely with the CIA and
NSA. Needless to say, he had jumped at the chance. But now he realized that if the job didn’t kill him, the man named Smith surely would.

Smith looked down at the ornate door handle that was probably cast sometime in the 1940s. He depressed the thumb plate and knew immediately that he had touched something other than brass. Under his thumb he felt slick, cold glass. He opened the door without
pausing and stepped into the pawn shop. He held the door open a moment as two teenage girls left holding a bag full of CDs. He smiled and nodded as they giggled their way past. He closed the door and then looked around the shop. There were musical instruments hanging on the walls, large-screen LED television sets, and stereo systems.
If this was a front
, he thought,
it was convincing
.

Smith started
up the aisle toward the back of the store where he noticed an older man leaning against the glass cases reading a magazine. As he looked at the many pawned items on display, he watched the man without him ever knowing it. He saw the clean-shaven face and the well-trimmed hair. That was when Smith smelled military. As he stepped to the counter he also saw that he was being observed by no less
than fifteen cameras, far too many for a small pawn shop. The older man noticed his approach and then closed his magazine.

“Howdy, what can I do ya’ for?” the man asked as he looked Smith up and down.

“Well, I just want to get these appraised,” he answered with a return smile as he held out the wedding ring and the watch.

The older man behind the counter looked at the two items and then smiled.
“Without looking through my jeweler’s loupe, I can tell you the ring isn’t what you probably think it is, and the watch, well,” he started to say as he pulled a large cardboard box out from under the counter, “as you can see, I have a bunch of that crap already.” He looked at Smith, and then he relented a little. “Having a hard stay in Vegas my friend?”

Smith smiled and tried to look embarrassed.
“You can say that.”

“Okay partner. I’ll give you fifty for the ring. On the condition you take that fifty, put gas in your car, and go home. Do we have a deal?”

Smith placed the ring on the countertop and then nodded his head as if he were embarrassed to no end.

“Ah, don’t sweat it my friend, we all have our moments. You just had yours and now you’ve learned from it.” The man, a staff sergeant
in the U.S. Army and part of the security team for the Event Group Complex, took the ring and then slid a paper form toward Smith for him to fill out. “Name, address, phone number, and sign at the bottom of the page. And I’ll tell you what, I’ll treat this as a loan, so you can get it back before the wife finds out.”

“Thanks buddy—thanks a lot.” Smith watched as the clerk turned and went into
the back room. When the thick curtain parted he could see two other men standing in the back with the refuse of junk collected by the gambling lowlifes that frequented this place. He saw one of the men look up at him just before the curtain slid back into place. The man was medium sized, and he was black. Their eyes locked for the briefest of moments, but in that short time Smith had confirmed what
he already suspected. The place was a front for something. What, he didn’t know yet. But the black man with the bandage on the side of his jaw was the very same man from Mexico they had pulled out of that culvert outside of Perdition’s Gate. Smith would recognize him anywhere.

As the old man returned from the back room, he handed Smith his fifty dollars in cash. He read the receipt of exchange
and then smiled. “ID please.”

Smith produced the fake license that corresponded with the fake name and address he had given on the loan form. The old man wrote down the license number and then slid the ID back.

“Now, you go home,” he looked down at the receipt, “Mr. Smith, and we’ll see you when you come back to get your ring.”

“You bet,” Smith said as he pocketed the cash and then placed the
watch that he couldn’t pawn into his pocket.

Smith strolled confidently through the pawn shop and then hesitated at the door to see what was happening behind him thanks to the reflection in the thick glass. The old man watched him for a moment and then went back to the magazine he was reading. Smith opened the door and left. As he crossed the street he felt inside of his coat pocket. The watch
that he couldn’t pawn appeared and he smiled as he dropped it into the gutter beside the Tahoe. He entered the backseat and handed the man his fifty dollars.

“They took both the watch and the ring.”

The man just looked down at the cash in his hand. That was all he received for the wedding ring and the watch his wife gave him last Christmas.

“This place has something under it, I can smell it.
A passageway, something…,” Smith said as his words trailed off in thought. “We may have to call in another favor and get some geological data of the area leading to and from that pawn shop.” He smiled to no one but himself as a plan started to form. “Now, let’s go to the private address out on Flamingo Road.”

*   *   *

Inside the Gold City Pawn Shop, Will Mendenhall stepped out from behind the
curtain and watched as the large man crossed the street and vanished. He shook his head as he tried to think.

“What is it, Lieutenant?” the sergeant asked as he again closed his magazine.

“Did that guy look familiar to you?” Will asked as he watched the gathering darkness outside to see if the man would reappear.

“Familiar? One thing you should remember from your time at this counter, sir,
is that everyone looks familiar.”

Mendenhall smiled at the memory of the boring days on gate duty. He slapped the sergeant on the back. “Yeah I do remember.” He turned as one of the marines in the back room looked out from behind the curtain. He made sure no customers were in the shop and then faced Will.

“The director called and said they’re ready for your deposition to our newly arrived CDC
people.”

Mendenhall perked up as he realized he would get to see the young Dr. Bannister again. Then his smile faded as he remembered she would be with her father, Colonel Bannister.

Mendenhall turned and left as he was starting to realize he didn’t stand a chance with someone like Gloria Bannister.

*   *   *

The reactivated Event Group personnel from the CDC were sitting around the large
conference table on the seventh level. Niles Compton was at his accustomed place at the head of the table and next to him was Virginia. The doctors from the Group and now the CDC were all facing the large-screen monitor as they took in the information compiled by Pete, who was busy using his pointer on the large 3-D screen while explaining about Perdition’s Gate and its ownership through the years.

“We have thus far met a block wall as far as getting the history of Professor Lawrence Ambrose. His academic credentials, his research grants, his employment history seem to have been misplaced by everyone in government. Where he received the millions upon millions of dollars to conduct research has not been discovered—yet,” Pete added. “We hope to have that question answered very soon as we are
just now starting to pore through the old data compiled by the Group back in 1916. The material is volumes in length and extremely detailed so it may take a while. We have decided that at least one of you should assist in the archival research. You may see something we don’t.”

“So, until two days ago you had never heard of this Lawrence Ambrose before?” Colonel Bannister asked.

“No,” Niles answered
for Pete Golding. “We discovered the results of his work and the sample we brought back after our security detachment’s raid into Perdition Hacienda south of Nuevo Laredo one day ago.”

“And the subject of this raid had no knowledge of the hacienda’s ownership at the turn of the century?” Dr. Emily Samuels, one of Virginia’s old nuclear science students, asked.