The End Game (2 page)

TUESDAY

1

Allentown, New Jersey

I really didn’t want to be here. Then again, who would?

Three o’clock in the morning, me and my partner Nick Aparo, in our unmarked SUV, parked on a dark street in the middle of nowhere with the engine off, freezing our nuts off, watching, waiting for the go signal, making sure our target didn’t vaporize before we nabbed him.

Don’t get me wrong. This is my job. I do it by choice. I do it because I believe in it, because I think what we do, as special agents of the FBI, is important. And the guy in our crosshairs on this particular night deserved our full attention, no question.

It’s just that I had bigger fish to fry. White whales, in fact, ones neither Nick nor the Bureau could know about. But more on that later.

Right now, all I can tell you is that we’d spent countless hours staring through the condensation-clouded windscreen and the snow flurries outside at the single-story house up and across the street, the one with the hypnotic, mind-numbing Christmas lights twinkling along the edge of its roof, and I was exhausted. We’d been at it for days.

Whatever our target was doing inside his house, he was doing it in considerably more warmth than us poor saps who were sworn to bring him to justice. We were sitting in north of a hundred thousand dollars of customized FBI vehicle and the heated seats had still managed to conk out, leaving the two of us shivering like we were being continuously tasered. Running the engine while the whole street slept was not an option. Not unless we wanted to give our target a clear heads-up.

On the positive side, at least no one could see us. In terms of discretion, sitting in a snow-covered vehicle in a line of snow-covered vehicles was pretty much ideal. It just meant we had to rely on the four video feeds on our laptop, the ones coming from cameras we’d managed to set up on our target.

The blizzard had stopped an hour ago, adding a more substantial covering to the inch that had refused to thaw. Now it was snowing again. This cold front was definitely winning in terms of historic meteorological bragging rights. I’ve got to admit, it was exhausting. The body burns up energy trying to stay warm, and at three in the morning, after several nights of this, I was running low on juice.

I watched my breath billowing out in front of my eyes as I zipped up my FBI parka, the cold metal of the zip reaching its endpoint against my nose. Any more coffee and there was zero chance of sleep when I finally made it home—in time to watch the sun rise as I zoned out against a deeply asleep Tess.

Nick, on the other hand, had no such concerns and was pouring himself yet another mug from the five-liter flask before sipping the steaming, bitter liquid like it had been lovingly made by his favorite barista. He looked ridiculous in his big, Russian-style fur hat, the flaps of which he had pulled right down over his ears, but nothing I said was going to make him lose it. At least he was watching the house with me and not sitting there flicking through an endless array of female Tinder offerings while subjecting them to the incessant vocal critique that usually accompanied his left- and right-swipes, which was his MO on previous stakeouts. Small mercies, I guess.

The subject of our impromptu igloo huddle was called Jake Daland.

Daland was an interesting target, a nice change from the Jihadist scumbags hogging our work load. He was the founder and head honcho of Maxiplenty, which had taken over from Silk Road after we shut down that online drugs marketplace and arrested its kingpin. Like Silk Road, Maxiplenty was a bazaar that sat in the hidden part of the internet, the dark net, but it was bigger and better, and it had one crucial innovation: it was a barter-only site. Daland had come up with a neat way to try to avoid the fate of Silk Road by avoiding financial transactions altogether: no cash, no checks, no credit cards, no Bitcoins. At Maxiplenty, you could do anything you wanted—get hold of drugs, guns, explosives, launder money, or have someone killed—provided you had something you could trade for it. Despite its tongue-in-cheek name, a Daland twist on a Newspeak term from George Orwell’s
1984
, Maxiplenty had become a virtual clubhouse for the depraved, a hub for some pretty nasty stuff. Which is why we were here, waiting for word that power had been cut to Daland’s house before we stormed in and shut him down.

Fingering Daland was as the man behind the curtain wasn’t easy. Maxiplenty used a highly sophisticated network of servers located around the world along with a seemingly infinite process of IP spoofing to disguise both the site itself and those using it. When two of his users successfully swapped murders, the US Attorney’s Office went into overdrive. It took the techies at Quantico’s Cyber Division lab weeks to finally crack his invisibility cloak and secure enough evidence to ensure an arrest stuck. Evidence we now finally had, as of four hours ago, along with the signed confessions from both murderers. Which is why we were here, waiting for word that power had been cut to Daland’s house before we stormed in.

We weren’t alone. The whole team, including a couple of specialists from Cyber Division, was waiting close by, equipped with night vision goggles and, with a bit of luck, a little less frozen than us. The aim was to disconnect all the computer equipment—along with any battery backups—before we turned the power back on and began the bagging and tagging. I didn’t want Daland to have the tiniest window in which to hit some kind of nuke switch and wipe his hard drives.

So here we were, poised, waiting for the engineers from Jersey Central Power & Light to tell us they were ready to hit the switch. They were fairly used to being called out at ungodly hours this time of year. The bad weather and overloading from seasonal light displays meant they had to be available 24/7. Still, it was taking longer than I expected.

“Heads up, Reilly,” a voice announced through my earpiece. “Looks like it’s feeding time at the zoo again.”

I looked out through the near whiteout on the other side of the windows and saw the now-familiar pizza delivery car with half a plastic forty-eight-inch pepperoni sticking out of the roof glide past.

“
More
pizza?” Nick grumbled, peering out through the windshield. “How in God’s name can he eat so much pizza and stay so thin? Bastard.”

I turned to face him, a slight grin on my face. “Maybe he doesn’t chase it down with a bowl of lasagna.”

My partner was fairly legendary for his appetites, particularly when it came to Italian food and generously proportioned blonds. The former had provided something of a distraction when the latter ended up getting him divorced. Nowadays, he was happy to indulge in both, having finally come to terms with the court-appointed bi-weekly weekends with his eleven-year-old son. He’d also stuck with the spinning classes. I lost that bet, along with most of Twenty-six Federal Plaza.

“What’s wrong with having a pizza as a starter? That’s how they do it in Italy, you philistine.”

I smiled. “Maybe he’s got a gym in there.”

His face got all bent out of shape. “At home? Alone? What’s the point of that?

“The point of exercise being to meet the babes, right?”

“D-uh. But, hey, if I get to live a couple of extra years, that’s cool too.”

The delivery guy kept his engine idling as he hurried up to the door and rang the bell.

The snowflakes were getting meatier.

I adjusted the screen brightness on the laptop sitting at my elbow. I concentrated on the feed from the camera showing the house’s front door.

Jake Daland—elegant as ever in a short, silk kimono over a deep V-necked white T-shirt that exposed a mat of black chest hair—opened the door with the same calm, nonchalant demeanor. No stepping halfway through the door, no furtively peering to left and right. Zero interest in what was outside the house at all. Either he knew we were out here and didn’t care, or—and though possible, it was by now fairly improbable—he didn’t have a clue that he’d been under surveillance for days.

Daland took the pizza box and handed the delivery guy some money. The delivery guy seemed a bit thrown. They exchanged a few words as he struggled with his oversized puffer coat, fishing through its pockets, then shook his head, the cash in his outstretched hand.

“What’s he doing?” Nick asked.

“Daland must have handed him a large bill and the kid doesn’t have enough change.”

Nick shrugged. “We’re
so
on the wrong side of the law.”

They exchanged a few more words, then Daland waved the driver inside. The guy went in and the door closed behind him.

Moments later, the delivery guy re-emerged. He was holding a gift-wrapped box from his most loyal small-hours customer.

Nick said, “Now he’s giving the guy a Christmas present?” He shook his head. “I’m telling you, Sean, we chose poorly, man. Poor-ly.”

The delivery guy got back in his car and drove away.

It was at that precise moment that my earpiece burst back to life. “We have a go. All teams: get into position.”

Nick and I climbed out of the Expedition. We were wearing Kevlar under our FBI parkas, even though I thought it was highly unlikely we’d meet any armed resistance. Four SWAT members were already skulking up to the house’s front door, while two other agents, Annie Deutsch and Nat “Len” Lendowski, climbed out of another unmarked vehicle and approached from the opposite direction. We had other men covering the rear of the house. The tech specialists would wait till the house was secure.

We fell in behind the SWAT guys. “One in position,” I said into my cuff mike.

“Two in position,” came the confirmation from the rear of the house.

“Hold,” the voice in my ear said. A brief moment, then it came back. “In five. Four. Three.” Two seconds later, the Christmas lights on Daland’s roof snapped off as the power was cut.

We flipped down our night vision goggles and drew our sidearms as the SWAT team leader swung his battering ram through the door, but just as we were about to follow them in, an alarm burst to life inside me as my brain spontaneously highlighted something I’d seen as I walked up to the house.

Something I’d barely noticed out of the corner of one eye.

Lying innocuously by the edge of the curb, obscured by the shade of some parked cars, barely noticeable: a flash of red ribbon.

The Christmas gift that Daland had given to the delivery guy only minutes earlier. Discarded, tossed away like garbage.

I was electrified with the feeling that something was wrong.

“Nick! Car —now,” I shouted as I pulled off my goggles and stepped back, toward the sidewalk. I saw Deutsch and Lendowski looking at me, all confused, and just waved them on. “Go, go, go!”

They disappeared into the house as I passed the gift and jabbed a finger toward it, telling Nick, “The gift’s a prop. He faked us out.”

We hurried into the Expedition, Nick’s face shooting me a sizeable question mark as I slammed the big SUV into gear and floored it.

We fishtailed away from the curb, with me shouting over the revs, “The delivery guy’s still in the house. Daland drove off in the pizza car.”

Nick shook his head. “Bastard’s got a couple of minutes on us.”

The roads were covered with snow, but the four-wheel drive of the Expedition was rock solid as it ate up the miles. There were no cars driving around, not at that hour, and we soon hit an intersection. I stopped, clueless about which way to go.

“He knows he’s burnt,” I said. “Which means he knows everyone else is burnt too. So where’s he going?”

Nick rubbed his face, trying to force his brain into gear. “Daland knows we’ll be looking for the car and it’s not the most discreet ride. He needs to ditch it fast.”

“Yeah, but where? And swap over to what?”

The onboard satnav flickered through screens as Nick worked it. I couldn’t wait for it to suggest some answers. I scanned the road’s surface and could just about make out a set of thin tracks that turned left.

I followed.

Nick watched as I turned onto another residential street, then his attention went back to the navigation system. Thick walls of snow were now making it increasingly difficult to see where we were going. Even at full speed, the wipers were straining against the weight of the heavy flakes and the trail I was following was getting progressively more shrouded by the new snow.

We were going to lose him.

I adjusted the traction control. “He can’t stay out in this. Either he’s got somewhere to lay low nearby or he’s got a fallback drive stashed somewhere.”

Nick shook his head and said, “I can’t see him having that much foresight. Doesn’t seem in character.”

I nodded. “A cab, maybe? Or maybe he’s ordering an Uber.”

Nick grabbed the car radio’s mike. “I need the location of all twenty-four-hour cab companies around the target’s house.”

Moments later, the radio squawked, “Millpond Cabs, corner of North Main and Church.”

The radio squawked again, another voice this time. It was Lendowski. “Daland’s in the wind,” he said. “The pizza guy is freaking. Daland told him he needed to avoid an angry boyfriend. Told him the angry guy’s girlfriend was in the bedroom and gave him three hundred bucks. Reilly, where the hell are you?”

So it wasn’t about change after all. Not that it mattered.