The Warrior Code (6 page)

He pondered for a moment. ‘How did you get to Jackson from Boston?’

‘Flew via Chicago, and at Jackson Hole Airport, we rented a car. This was five days back. We came to Jackson around two in the afternoon and checked in at the same hotel we were staying in yesterday. We went to the Town Hall and met Kelly and some other cops that we knew.

‘No one from Dad’s SWAT team lives in Jackson anymore. One of them, Joe McBride, died a couple of years back in a hunting accident. Jack Foley, Zach Suiter and Ryan Taggart are in Washington, D.C. All three of them have careers in politics. Foley and Taggart are on fast-track careers in the Department of Homeland Security. Suiter is a very well-known political lobbyist who works for defense firms. The fifth one, Dante Jordan, is in Florida, writing cop stories. The SWAT commander during Dad’s time is still around, and we’d been to meet him – more a courtesy call than anything. Commander Peregrine is a seasoned professional, and while Dad wasn’t close to him, Peregrine was responsible for making sure Dad’s service benefits came to us smoothly and quickly.

‘We were there till about five in the evening, came to Town Square, browsed in the stores a bit, had our caffeine fix, and then went to Kelly’s home in South Park in the evening for dinner, maybe around seven. We returned around ten, hit the bed, and left Jackson around eleven in the morning the next day, with a group from the hotel that was also heading to the park. That day, we didn’t venture outside the hotel. You know the rest of our movements once we reached the park.’

Meghan held her hand up to forestall him. ‘Nope, we didn’t see anything unusual, didn’t meet anyone who we shouldn’t have met, certainly no one carrying a gang membership card.’

‘These people you headed out with, how well did you know them?’

‘Not well at all. They were a family of five whom we met in the hotel over breakfast the day we were checking out. We talked and decided to drive out together. It’s not like we were lifelong friends.’

Zeb leaned back in his chair, waving away the approaching waitress. He was coffee’d out. The twins leaned forward, waiting for him to give his opinion, and when none came, Meghan frowned.

‘Zeb? ZEB?’

‘I swear the Sphinx talks more than you,’ she said when he looked at her. ‘So what do you think? What have we landed in?’

‘Who was your dad closest to?’ he asked her in return.

‘Kelly and Joe McBride,’ she replied promptly. ‘Joe was his partner in SWAT, and the two were very good friends. Joe and his wife, Maggie, didn’t have any kids, and they used to hang out at our place many a time. It was mostly Maggie who stayed with me at the hospital. When Joe died, we stayed with her at their home in Idaho Falls for a month and helped her pick up the pieces.

‘Why do you ask?’

He looked past her without replying, and when he continued looking beyond them, they turned.

Kelly was approaching them fast, disregarding the looks of the people he jostled past.

He stood over them, breathing heavily.

‘They’re gone. The five gang guys. All gone.’

Chapter 7

Zeb stared at him, hearing the twins gasp softly as Kelly pulled a chair and settled heavily. Rage and embarrassment played on his face.

‘They were in the Teton County Jail, about four blocks away from here. That’s where all inmates are housed. Sheriff’s office was notified – the jail comes under his jurisdiction – and all paperwork was done. Early this morning, very early, at six, a black Suburban swept up, three men came in, presented their papers, authorizations and all that shit, and whisked the prisoners away. They were–’

‘FBI agents,’ Zeb cut in.

Kelly glared at him through bushy eyebrows, as he struggled hard to contain his anger. ‘Good guess. How did you know?’

Zeb shrugged. ‘Not difficult to work out. Black vehicle, three men – generally the only agency a sheriff’s office or state police will hand prisoners over to is a federal agency. The FBI is the most recognized federal law enforcement agency.’

Kelly nodded slowly. ‘The guys at the jail checked their papers, made calls to confirm their credentials, and by seven a.m., they were away. I came in an hour later, and there was a message for me from the jail, notifying me of the transfer.

‘I was puzzled because I had spoken to Ketchum and Connor at YNP and neither had mentioned the Feds taking over the prisoners. I called Connor, and he was clueless, and then the alarm bells started ringing. By then it was too late, we were already deep in it. Those three agents were fake. The papers they presented were fake. That call made from the jail went to a number that was answered so professionally and with the correct protocol that the officers at the jail had no reason to suspect anything.’

He ran his hand over his bristly hair. ‘Bottom line, our prisoners are gone. We’ve no idea who set up their phony release or where they went. Of course, we alerted all our patrol cars to be on the lookout for a black Suburban. They found it or what was left of it. It was found burning on the edge of town. No doubt, those escapees are in another getaway car.’

‘Any connection all this has to the university shooting or to any of Petersen’s cases?’

Kelly growled. ‘Nope. We’ve discussed that possibility at length and rejected it. There’s just too long a time interval.’

‘Besides, after the university shooting, we took a microscope to that horrific incident. We looked into all the back cases of the entire SWAT team, spent several hundred man-hours investigating, and found zilch in correlation.’

‘All this shit happening now is in no way connected to the past.’

He took a deep breath, and sound crept back in again. He let them digest it and then told the twins abruptly, ‘Get out. Get out of town now. Go back to Boston. I am saying this as your dad’s closest friend. We’ll investigate this, but this just became a ginormous clusterfuck.’

He saw their faces firm and laughed suddenly, all anger gone from him. ‘You are Bud’s daughters. He wouldn’t have run away either. All right, have it your way, but remember this’ – his face sobered – ‘we aren’t geared to protect you.’

Meghan smiled and patted his hand. ‘Gotcha, Kelly. We know what you’re saying and what you aren’t. We’re staying till we get to the bottom of this. We’ve got our knight in shining armor right here, for a few more days, so I think we’ll be okay.’

Beth looked at Zeb doubtfully. ‘Dunno about the shining bit, sis. He’s a bit dull.’

‘Not for a few days. Till we wrap this up.’

The twins looked at him, their eyes wide, as his words sank in. He ignored their look.

Kelly nodded slowly as if he’d confirmed something. ‘Why?’

Zeb said simply, ‘I’ve a stake in this now. That hood tried to kill me. Those guys that got away, they know I’m involved. I’ve no idea how clearly they saw me, but I have to assume that they have my description.’

Kelly continued looking at Zeb, but addressed the twins. ‘Connor said Director Murphy, after he had torn a second one into him, told him to stop thinking about the women and focus on getting the prisoners back. He told Connor if Zeb was around, it was the gang who had to worry.’

His bushy eyebrows came together. ‘You realize this is bigger than a state gang.’

Zeb agreed. ‘Yeah. Faking FBI creds – that takes organization, clout and reach. That’s also a federal crime and these guys are prepared to risk that. There’s someone with significant reach and an organization behind him who’s feeling threatened by the twins. I think the gang was just the most convenient tool at hand in the state.’

Kelly was curious. ‘You think those guys who busted the hoods out of jail – they were out-of-state operators?’

‘Yeah. If they were in Wyoming, then they had no need to rely on the gang. They operate at a different level than the gang and could have deployed their own men in the first place.’

‘My take exactly. And you’re still staying?’

‘Yup.’

Kelly drawled as he stood up. ‘Well then, let me leave you to whatever you’re hatching. If we get any breaks, I’ll let you know.’

Kelly’s blue eyes swept over all of them. ‘Remember, no vigilante action. We are a small town, we love tourists, and there’s just no way we’re going to condone the Jackson version of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.’

Silence fell over them when Kelly left. Zeb toyed with his cup, his senses sharpening slowly, feeling the taste of air on his skin, the feel of sounds impacting him – his body’s way of telling him it was ready. It was prepared. It was lethal.

He felt the weight of eyes on him and looked at the twins. ‘Kelly gave you good advice. You’re safer back in Boston.’

They gave him stubborn looks. ‘And like we said, we aren’t going. If you don’t help us, we will investigate this on our own.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Where will you start?’

Beth smiled sweetly at him. ‘Zeb, we’re not dumb. We’ll go through the back pages of the newspapers, check out if anything happened on the day and a half that we were here.’

‘And if nothing comes out of that?’

They looked uncertainly at each other and then looked back at him. ‘We’ll think of something,’ she said bravely.

He nodded appreciatively. ‘The newspapers are the first place to start.’

He stood up and donned his shades. ‘Let’s go. Let’s start hunting.’

He stood outside the café waiting for them to join him, looking casually across Town Square, another tourist among thousands of tourists.

Nothing pinged his radar.

Meghan looked around his room when they entered. It was identical in size and layout to theirs; the difference was his gleamed in tidiness. The bed was neatly made up; the bedside tables and larger desk in the corner were bare. There wasn’t a single personal belonging in sight. She looked at Beth and saw she had the same thought. Zeb seemed to have some kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder, OCD.

They had asked once about his family and had received a look in return that had shut them up for half an hour. They resorted to spinning wild backstories for him, and the latest one they had made up had them laughing long in the night. ‘He’s gay. He lost his boyfriend to some badasses and has now become an avenging angel.’

Meghan giggled and then laughed. ‘Why’s he gay?’

Beth rolled her eyes. ‘Come on, sis! You really think he could win over women with that Zen-like attitude? Any woman he dated would fall asleep waiting for his next word.’

They sprawled on his bed, waiting for Zeb to return from the bathroom. ‘Bet he’s sprucing himself up for us,’ Beth whispered, and that set them off.

‘Wise One, why are we here?’ Beth asked him when he emerged, and got a sharp nudge from Meghan.

Zeb looked at them – if the light was right, and if they looked hard, that expression could just be a smile. Just.

‘We attack this from three ends. First we do exactly what Beth said. We go through all that happened in this town when you came in and see if there can be any correlation to your attacks. Secondly, we dig up more info on this gang, who they are, where they hang out, that kind of stuff. Thirdly, we check out your father’s cases and see if there are any links to this gang, or see if those crazies had any links to this gang.’

He caught their expression. ‘I know the cops ruled that those crazies were just that, and I’m aware that six years is a long time for a gang to take action, but we have to be sure.’

He dried his face with a towel and hung it in the closet, straightening it till he was satisfied. He caught them watching him, and that expression appeared again. ‘Nope. It’s not OCD. It can be used as a weapon. Draping it right makes it easier to grab.’

He pulled out his sat phone, dialed a number, switched to speaker mode, and dropped it on the bed.

Two thousand miles away, in New York, Broker looked at the incoming number, thumbed it, crossed his feet on his desk, and leaned back.

‘Zeb,’ he shouted, ‘you haven’t killed anyone in more than twenty-four hours. What gives?’

‘Broker, phone’s on speaker. Let me introduce you to–’

‘Meghan and Beth Petersen, right? I know all about them. I know almost everything that’s happened. But why don’t you fill me in, and I’ll figure out how I can rescue your sorry ass from whatever shit it’s caught in.’

He laughed, his rumbling baritone making the phone vibrate.

‘Ladies, I believe you’ve been in Zeb’s company for four days, so you know he has maybe ten, twenty words in his vocabulary. Let’s not make him exhaust those words. I am Broker. I dunno how much Zeb has told you about himself–’

‘They know enough,’ Zeb cut in.

‘Right. That helps. I am an intelligence analyst, the best in the world.’ Broker was modest. ‘I’m also the planner for our missions. The three of you pinged Werner’s radar, at YNP, and since then I’ve been keeping an electronic eye on you.’

Werner was a sophisticated artificial intelligence program that Broker owned; it was the heart of his intelligence business. Werner trawled the far corners of the Internet, hacked its way into the most secure systems and databases, made connections between seemingly disparate events and people, and spat back results based on any criteria that Broker set. Broker had human intelligence – humint – analysts all over the world, who took those results, applied their knowledge and analytical skills, and created the reports that got sent out to Broker’s clients. He also had hackers in Ukraine and Russia who worked for him. They went about cracking systems all over the world and fed the intel to Werner.

Werner always tracked the Warriors, all six of them, and flagged Broker whenever any of them were involved in any incident.

‘What do you mean, keeping an electronic eye on us?’ Meghan asked him.

‘Just that. For instance, I know the two of you had fried chicken and waffles and Spanish frittata for breakfast.’ He mentioned the café’s name. ‘I also know Meghan is wearing a red and blue flannel shirt over blue jeans, and Beth is wearing a yellow Gap hoodie over black jeans.’

The twins went slack jawed. ‘How–’

‘Elementary, my dear Petersen,’ Broker rumbled on. ‘I know what Zeb orders. He always orders the same food every time, which makes it easy for Werner. So all Werner had to do was correlate his food order to yours, identify the café, and then hack into their security cameras and voila`!’