The Cyclops Conspiracy (42 page)

He leaned back, hands clasped behind his head, satisfaction enveloping him. Retirement would be a welcome change, and it loomed right around the corner. He’d received Hammon’s blessing to end his career after this operation was complete, on the condition that he left the country, never to return.

His job was simple. Cooper would operate Cyclops, enabling Sam Fairing and Jasmine Kader to take their shots. He’d slip quietly out of the Windsor Towers and into a life of complete anonymity. He had no beef with either of the doomed politicians. He was not a political man, preferring to avoid the nastiness that accompanied ideology. He was a grunt. He followed orders. And following orders had made him very wealthy.

The risk, however, was enormous. As the appointed hour ticked closer, the danger of the entire scheme was beginning to rear its head in his mind. They would be sitting on the fourth floor of an apartment building whose roof would be patrolled by countersnipers of the United States Secret Service. He’d have no more than fifteen minutes to escape after the shots were fired. The car was parked in the lot near the exit. Take the stairs, run through the lobby and across the parking lot to the car. His best time was eight minutes, his worst ten.

He’d bluffed Zanns, telling her he’d skip out if she didn’t pay. But even if he’d had the balls to leave, he had little choice now. If he failed to complete his part, Hammon’s henchmen—the same men currently hunting the pharmacist and his friends—would be retasked to kill him. Money and distance would not buy him safety. He held no desire to incur their emotionless wrath.

The oversized briefcase sat on the floor beside him. “Cyclops” was the only machine of its kind, and key to the mission’s success. Zanns had paid dearly for it. Cooper was the only person with the know-how—and the pass codes—to operate it. He’d made sure of that. It made him indispensable and, he was quite certain, was keeping him alive. At the moment, he was a very valuable asset. His phone rang. Only one person had this number.

“They have a CD recording of Z and her team.” It was Hammon’s gravelly voice.

“I know,” Cooper replied.

“What’s on it?”

“Talk of the big event.”

“Wonderful,” Hammon replied sarcastically.

“Actually, it’s good news. The pharmacist and his cohorts know of no other conspirators. The recording implicates Z and her people. We should obtain the file and leak it.”

Hammon cleared his throat. Cooper could hear the familiar click of the pipe stem against teeth. “The private investigator is no longer a concern. Eurus and Ford dispatched him. Zephyr and Horn haven’t reported in. We have to assume they’ve been compromised, probably taken out by the marine. Reports say he’s been taken to the hospital. There’s no word from Notus and Miller.” Hammon’s voice was heavy. “We’ll get the pharmacist within minutes. The fool returned to his house and took a call there. Boreas and McCall are moving on him now.”

Cooper swallowed. He spoke tentatively. Hammon was not a man accustomed to being told what to do. “Since Eurus and Ford are free, might I suggest sending them to the private investigator’s home to find the recording or the device itself?”

“That place is crawling with police. I’ll send them after the marine.”

* * *

Christine screamed. Jason shoved her toward the back of the house, cutting her anguished cry short. Two quick shots buried themselves in the far wall. Jason ducked out of view.

Christine stumbled to a knee. Jason grabbed her by the waistband, yanking her to her feet.

“Go! Go! Go!” he shouted, shoving her toward the back door. “Get out!”

Jason squeezed against the wall, staying between the intruder and Christine. The long black cylinder of the silencer appeared around the corner, followed by the pistol.

Jason flung himself at the gun, grabbing the hand holding the weapon. He slammed it against the sharp corner of a counter top. The pistol clattered across the tile floor. Jason aimed an elbow at the man’s
nose. The face turned at the last instant, causing the blow to smash the cheek instead. The man staggered and fell, squeezing a handful of shirt, pulling Jason to the floor. “Christine! Get the—” Jason’s voice was cut short by a chop to the throat.

* * *

Christine watched for a heartbeat until Jason’s words broke her panicked trance. She darted to the weapon and picked it up. Shakily, she aimed at the two men rolling about, entangled in a frantic death struggle. Christine trained for a shot on the enemy combatant without hitting Jason.

At that instant, the glass of the back door shattered. A shower of sparkling glass blew inward. Another armed man crashed through. Head down, protecting his face, the gunman recovered and came up firing. As Christine turned, silenced rounds thumped around her.

Reflexively, she fired, ripping off five shots. The third shot struck the collarbone, twisting his body in midair. His weapon flailed, showering bullets in a wide arc as he crumpled to the carpet.

Christine stepped to the wounded man, leveling the weapon. Blood spurted from a large vessel near his clavicle. The pistol lay inches from his twitching fingers. His eyes were wide with the knowledge of his own impending death. Yet an ingrained instinct compelled him to finish his mission.

“Don’t do it!” Christine shouted. In the background, the punches and gasps of Jason’s struggle echoed through the darkened house.

In a final, desperate spasm, he raised the gun…

An eruption of red coincided with the dull report from the weapon in her hands. The man’s neck exploded. In seconds, the amount of blood on the carpet tripled.

The noise of the struggle behind her had ceased, followed by heavy footfalls. Christine turned. Her field of vision went black, then white, as she was tackled and lifted into the air.

* * *

The front-door attacker had broken free after pummeling Jason in the face, stunning him. The man darted around the corner. Jason pursued a step behind and watched helplessly as he rammed into Christine, grabbing at the gun in her hands. They sailed over the back of the sofa. The man landed on top of her, crushing her into the coffee table, which splintered in loud, sickening cracks.

Jason launched himself over the couch, wrapping an arm around the killer’s throat and pulling him off Christine. He squeezed desperately, crushing the windpipe and choking off the killer’s air. He saw the man’s ears grow several shades redder even in the moonlight. Jason could feel his own face burning. He had out-bruted Jason in the foyer, and Jason was making him pay by crushing his neck with every pound of pressure he possessed. A minute passed. The tension in his opponent slackened. Another thirty seconds, and it was gone completely. Jason held his position for fifteen seconds more. Slowly, he relaxed, and the killer flopped face-first onto the carpet.

Among the shattered glass, broken furniture, and human remains, Jason crawled desperately to Christine. She was not moving.

Routine maintenance, my ass!
Palmer thought. The server had been down for two hours, a regularly scheduled procedure he’d never needed to know about until now. It was close to four in the morning. The phone call from Peter Rodgers had come in an hour ago. His Blackberry hadn’t been able to access his department e-mail account. The detective raced to the police administration building, hoping his desktop would allow him access. When that failed, he called IS and was given the bad news.

Peter Rodgers had been the fourth man in the room the day Jason Rodgers and Waterhouse had tried in vain to convince him that Thomas Pettigrew had been murdered. He recalled him as very quiet, with a permanent scowl and eyes that held a reckless quality.

The facts of this case were convoluted and bizarre. At this point, Palmer had a hard time knowing what to believe. Jason Rodgers was on the run, an escaped prisoner, accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend. He was the same man who’d claimed Thomas Pettigrew had been murdered by insurance scammers at the Colonial Pharmacy in Newport
News. Jason and Walter Waterhouse, an acquaintance of Palmer’s, had also been present when one Douglas Winstead had his head blown off. Christine Pettigrew, Thomas’s daughter, had fired a weapon inside Lily Zanns’s home, trying to kill the woman. Now, only an hour ago, the brother had phoned, saying that Jason Rodgers was being framed and that President Hope and his father were in danger of assassination on Saturday during the christening.

Palmer recalled a phrase his father often used to describe such fucked-up situations. “Shitfire!” he said out loud.

The brother had said that Waterhouse had sent him an e-mail with a file attachment of the conversation between Zanns and her alleged coconspirators. It proved their intent to kill the presidents. It also contained a statement exonerating Jason Rodgers. What made the situation even more fucked up was a Secret Service bulletin that stated Jason Rodgers was not only wanted for the murder, but implicated in the assassination plot based on evidence found in his home.

Double shitfire!

As a cop, his first course of action should be to immediately call the Secret Service whenever he received a threat to the president, and let them handle it. They had a two-way flow of information with the department in preparation for the christening. The NNPD had assigned a detective to a task force created just for that purpose.

Palmer picked up the phone. He replaced the handset, deciding to wait to hear the recording for himself before making the call. He would confirm its existence and forward it to the task force liaison then. He was determined not to make the same mistake again.

Six years ago, a man had called in a threat to the president. Hope was in town for a commencement address. Without checking it out, Palmer had immediately called the Secret Service. Because the event was scheduled for the next day, agents had been dispatched to the home of an influential business executive in the middle of the night, waking his wife and kids and scaring the living shit out of them. The caller turned out to be a disgruntled employee bent on revenge for being fired.

The former employee had been prosecuted and eventually found guilty. But not before the police chief had had his ass chewed by the mayor. The executive was the largest contributor to the mayor’s re-election campaign and a very good friend. The police chief in turn had lit Palmer up for forty-five, red-faced, spittle-spewing minutes. To this day, Palmer was still reminded of his mistake by some of the older veterans.

While he waited for the server to come back online, Palmer reviewed the daily intelligence report. The secret squirrels—that’s what he called the guys from the Newport News Intelligence Division—distributed it daily. Homicide supervisor Sergeant Barry Waters had left it on his desk earlier that evening. It was a summary of all crimes in the area from neighboring localities, including Newport News.

Now, Palmer studied the report for any tidbit that might clue him into Jason Rodgers’s activities in the last twenty-four hours. If the pharmacist was smart, he’d be in another state or country. That was probably not the case. Criminals were human, and humans, by nature, were creatures of habit. They had rituals. They relied on their local network of people. Palmer sensed Rodgers was not a career criminal, but if he was involved in the assassination plot, Palmer knew he could be wrong. He guessed the pharmacist would stay close to home. Nonetheless, an alert for Rodgers and his female friend, Christine Pettigrew, had been put out statewide and nationally. Fugitives usually committed more crimes to avoid capture. Rodgers would make a mistake. Then they’d find him.

Rodgers’s escape from the regional jail was all over the news. Normally, he’d have let the sheriff’s department up there handle it. But Rodgers was also an employee of the Colonial, which was in Newport News. He was connected to crimes revolving around the pharmacy, and, evidently, a threat to the presidents.

Were all these crimes coincidences? Palmer didn’t think so. They all shared a common link. He just needed to find that small, exposed thread and pull until everything fell apart.

The report was arranged in alphabetical order by city. Chesapeake. Hampton. Newport News. Norfolk. Poquoson. Smithfield. Suffolk. Virginia Beach. Williamsburg. York County.

Chesapeake: an armed robbery of a convenience store, a hit-and-run accident.

Hampton: two shootings and two stolen vehicles, taken from driveways while owners slept. Palmer circled those listings. Those could be Rodgers trying to find wheels. He would have one of the junior detectives run it down.

In Newport News, the only listing of interest was a boat exploding on the James. Two charred bodies were found floating in the river. The fire department’s boat was on the scene. There were no other details.

Norfolk, the largest urban area in Tidewater, had a list filling two-and-a-half pages. Armed robbery, carjacking (possibly Rodgers), several break-ins, and an apparent suicide, among others.

Poquoson was next. One crime was detailed. Palmer was so stunned by the name of the victim, he spilled the open bottle of water onto his report.

He cursed.

Walter Waterhouse. Gunshot wound to the head. Dead at the scene. If it had made the news, Palmer hadn’t seen it. He looked at it twice, making sure he’d read it correctly.

He swore again as he blotted up the water with some tissues. Palmer put the paper down and absorbed the news. Waterhouse was somewhere between an acquaintance and a friend. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He picked up the phone to dial the Poquoson Police Department. He stopped when he read the next item on the list.

Smithfield: a shooting in a residential neighborhood. Two men were killed after a B and E. The owner shot them dead. Palmer would have skipped it, but the name caught his eye.

Rodgers. Peter Rodgers.

Isn’t that the same guy who called an hour ago?

Palmer drew a star next to the listing and wrote,
Call Smithfield PD
.

There was nothing in Virginia Beach. Pretty quiet for a resort city.