The coroner looked at the police detective, then at his lab assistant. “Because an FBI undercover agent connected to this case was murdered in the same fashion. According to my counterpart in the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office, the chemicals are identical.”
Alarmed, Uncle Mike looked at Paige. “Cook County? An agent connected to this case? What are you talking about? I thought Mr. Kreident was just investigating an accident in the DAF.”
“That death wasn’t an accident either, Mr. Waterloo,” the coroner said.
Uncle Mike reeled, and when Paige looked at him, she felt her cheeks burning. “I had to keep it from you for the past few days, Uncle Mike. We know that Ambassador Nevsky was dead for half an hour before the crate crushed his body,” she said. “He was murdered, and Jorgenson must have been involved somehow. Now we know Jorgenson’s been murdered, too.”
Uncle Mike looked from one person to another in the sterile room, speechless in his surprise. He looked down at the floor, shaking his head. “Carl — murdered? It doesn’t make sense. There was no reason for this to happen.”
Paige slipped an arm around the older man’s waist, knowing how much he had been through. “There’s no reason for any of it.”
Uncle Mike opened his mouth as if to say something, but all he could do was to shake his head.
CHAPTER 28
Running along the railroad tracks on the baked hardpan, Craig approached the edge of the Colorado River gorge. He could smell the creosote-covered railroad ties, the metallic tang of the hot sun glinting off the steel rails.
Goldfarb and Jackson followed close, approaching with all senses alert. Goldfarb kept his gaze down, studying the railroad tracks as if looking for a landmine or some sort of tripwire. After triggering the incendiaries that had set Connors’s house on fire, he seemed overly conscious of booby-traps.
Craig stood at the top, staring along the rim of the gorge and seeing numerous cracks and shadows where a person could hide. The canyon walls dropped off like a knife edge, but the erosion had left a steep but terraced slope to the winding, sluggish river below.
Jackson put a hand on his shoulder, startling him. “Keep down, Craig. You make too good a target up here.”
Realizing that he stood silhouetted and exposed for any hidden sniper, he crouched quickly. Momentarily angry at himself, he tried to calm down. He had too many things on his mind but couldn’t afford to slip up on the basics. Staying low, he continued to scan the patchwork of shadows along the multicolored rocks. “Goldfarb, you have those field glasses?”
“Remember they’re only five power,” the other agent said. He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a small pair of pocket binoculars.
In a careful search pattern, Craig worked his gaze back and forth down the cliff, starting just under the railroad bridge and moving out, scanning for any movement, any sign of tampering, or a human figure.
In the desert behind them, the motionless Amtrak train hissed and creaked as it baked in the midmorning heat. The passengers would be angry, or panicked, or confused. But he focused his entire attention on the cliff itself, on the bridge, on the framework of girders, on the attachment points and support pilings. He then scanned across the chasm.
He saw nothing. He felt a terrible fear that he might be wrong again. If the mysterious whistle-blower had meant only to discredit Craig, he seemed to be doing a good job.
The other two agents squatted beside him, shading their eyes and squinting. Craig pressed the small binoculars against his sunglasses, then finally removed his dark lenses to stare through the field glasses directly, trying to focus in the glare.
After five minutes of silence, Goldfarb finally cleared his throat and stood into a half crouch. “Uh, what do you think? Maybe they were just trying to distract us so we couldn’t spend time on the real investigation.”
But Craig kept scanning, moving his field of view farther from the bridge — knowing that if a member of the Eagle’s Claw had intended to sit here and trigger the explosive, he would have taken shelter some distance from the bridge, not right under it.
Then Craig saw the man, a silhouette crouching between two large boulders about a hundred yards away from the bridge and halfway down the canyon wall. He sat hunched over like a predator, waiting, not moving — a spider waiting for the fly to come just an inch closer.…
Craig stood up and drew his handgun. The Beretta felt cold to his grip.
“Where?” Jackson whispered, still crouching. Craig pointed, and both other agents saw the militia man from where he attempted to keep an eye on what was going on above. The silhouette froze, as if he couldn’t believe he had been spotted, and then he ducked back behind the boulder.
Goldfarb and Jackson both drew their weapons. “We can box him in,” Jackson said. “Just like a Quantico exercise.”
The militia man scrambled away behind the boulders, working his way down the rugged terraced wall toward the river at the bottom of the canyon, hoping to get away unseen.
“Well, so much for simple solutions,” Jackson said.
“My shin still hurts from yesterday, and I wish I’d brought my rock boots,” Goldfarb muttered. “How are your climbing skills, Craig?”
“Certified by the FBI,” Craig said and picked his way down the steep slope. He tried to divide his attention equally on watching the fleeing suspect, keeping his gun drawn, and maintaining his footing on the rough rock wall.
“He’s coming to the right,” Jackson said, “working back toward the bridge.”
“I don’t know where he thinks he’s going to go,” Goldfarb said, then gasped as his foot slipped. Rocks broke, pattering on other boulders along the cliffside in a hard rain.
“Keep steady,” Jackson said, grabbing his partner’s arm. “It’s going to be tough scraping you off the bottom and catching the bad guy at the same time.”
“Gee thanks,” Goldfarb said. “Just don’t let him get away.”
“I don’t see any direct path over there,” Craig said. “Let’s split up, come at him from three sides.”
Then a thin gunshot rang out like a tiny firecracker. A rock near Craig’s head burst into a spray of fragments. Two more shots echoed as the three FBI agents scrambled for cover.
“Why can’t anyone just surrender?” Goldfarb muttered.
“He’s trying to distract us,” Jackson called.
“Okay, I’m distracted,” Goldfarb said, ducking.
Craig peered around his meager shelter and saw a wiry man clad in military camouflage nimbly moving along a path that would have made a mountain goat nervous.
Jackson steadied his own handgun and fired carefully, striking the rocks above and to the right of the fleeing suspect. The militia man ducked and bent low, grasping for cover.
“That should slow him down,” Jackson said.
Craig gestured for Goldfarb to continue the direct pursuit, while he himself cut straight across the top, heading toward the bridge girders. He only hoped he could find some way down once he reached the terrorist’s position.
The terrorist tried to move; Jackson fired twice more, keeping the camouflaged man under cover.
Craig made good progress, finding a narrow ledge where he could pick up speed, so long as he didn’t look down the steep side to the muddy river far below.
The rocks became larger, jutting up in shards of red, brown, and tan as he approached where the bridge clung to the sides of the gorge. Craig stumbled upon a narrow fissure that allowed him to work his way straight down toward the crouching militia man. He could see the figure taking shelter below him as Goldfarb and Jackson both fired harassing shots to keep the wiry man down.