The attacker flew backward as if he’d been hit by a shotgun blast.
As I completed my step I reached to my belt for a fresh magazine.
But this alley fight was over and all the dogs were down. The main warehouse doors blew open and a second wave of SWAT came in like a swarm of pissed-off scorpions and anyone dumb enough to be still holding a gun went to meet Jesus — or whoever — in nothing flat.
Chap. 4
In the end, eleven alleged terrorists were shot, six fatally, including the cowboy with the Chinese assault rifle and the biter I nailed in the back — who according to his false ID was named Javad Mustapha. A terrorist with ties to El Mujahid. Turned out that none of our team was killed, though eight of them needed treatment, mostly for broken ribs. We were all rattled, but in the end it was a damn good day’s work.
I checked on Jerry. Kevlar stops bullets but it can’t stop foot-pounds of impact. Jerry had a cracked sternum and was one hurting pup.
“How you feeling, ya old fart?” I asked, squatting next to the gurney to which the EMTs had strapped him.
“Steal me that Cigarette boat and I’ll feel right as rain.” He ticked his chin toward my arm. “Hey, how’s your arm? EMT said you got bit.”
“Didn’t even break the skin. Weird sumbitch though, wasn’t he?”
“Looked to me like he came out of that blue box. The lock blew off and he stepped out, batshit crazy and looking at us like we’re Sunday dinner. McGoran said you popped him.”
“Seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
Jerry nodded, then gave me a faint smile. “Everybody’s talking about you, Joe. You saved some fellow officers today. I been hearing the ‘H’ word floating around.” When I looked puzzled he explained, “’Hero,’ son. That’s what they’re calling you.”
“Oh, please. I’m just one of the crowd, doing my job.”
He gave me a funny look, but it might have been the painkillers.
The EMTs took him away, and I watched as a bunch of federal agents in unmarked black BDUs came in to take over the crime scene.
Far as I was concerned it was all over.
Funny how wrong you can be about some things.
Chap. 5
Nobody who worked for him or with him knew his real name. The President called him Mr. Church, and that would do for now. He sat in a temporary office in a disused records storage warehouse in Easton, Maryland. He had a laptop on his desk, a glass of water, and a plate of cookies. Nothing else.
Mr. Church selected a vanilla wafer and munched it thoughtfully as he watched the replay of the video feeds from the raid in Baltimore. He punched the pause button and turned the laptop around toward the three big federal agents who sat across from him. A man’s face filled the screen.
“His name is Detective Joe Ledger,” said Mr. Church. His eyes were almost invisible behind the tinted lenses of his glasses, and his face wore no expression. “Baltimore PD, attached to a Homeland task force. This footage was taken two days ago. This is the one I want. Bring him in.”
The agents exchanged looks, but they left without comment. Questioning Mr. Church was never fruitful.
When they were gone, Mr. Church restarted the video and watched it again.
And again.
Zero Tolerance
NOTE: This story takes place a few weeks after the events of Patient Zero.
Chap. 1
“I never thought that anyone that beautiful could scare the shit out of me.”
“Tell me about her, Sergeant,” I said.
He looked away so quickly that I knew he’d been waiting for that request. He tried to keep a poker face, but he was a couple of tics off his game. Sleep deprivation, pain, and the certain knowledge that his ass was in a sling can do that. Even to a tough son of a bitch like Sergeant Harper. As he turned I saw the way guilt and shame twisted his mouth, but his eyes had a different expression. One I couldn’t quite nail down.
“Tell you what? That I can’t bear to close my eyes ’cause when I do I see her! That I’ve had the shivering shits ever since we found her out there in the sand! I don’t mind admitting it,” said the sergeant. He started to say more, then closed his mouth and shook his head.
The sergeant’s uninjured hand was freckled with powder burns and skin was missing from two knuckles. He ran his trembling fingers through his sandy hair as he spoke. He did it two or three times each minute. His other hand lay in his lap, cocooned in gauze wrappings.
I waited. I had more time.
After a full minute, though, I said, “Where did she come from?”
Harper sighed. “She was a refugee. We found her staggering in the foothills.”
“A refugee from what?”
“From the big meltdown out in the desert.”
“In the Helmand River Valley?”
“Yes.” He didn’t tack on “sir.” He was fucking with me, and I was okay with that for now. He didn’t know me, didn’t really know how much shit he was in, or how deep a hole he’d dug for himself. All he knew was that his career in the Marines had hit a guard rail at seventy miles an hour, and now he was sitting across a small table from a guy wearing captain’s bars and no other military insignia. No medals or unit patch. No name tag. Harper had to be measuring that against the deferential way the colonel treated me. Like I outranked him, which I don’t. I’m not even in the military anymore. But in this particular matter I was able to throw more weight than the base commander. More weight than anyone else in or out of uniform on the continent. As far as Harper was concerned, when it came to throwing him a lifeline it was me and then God, and God was off the clock.
Harper couldn’t really know any of that, but he was smart enough and sly enough to know that I had some juice. On one hand, he rightly figured that I could drop him into a hole deeper than the one he’d dug for himself. On the other hand, he had information that I wanted, and he was stalling to see how to play his only good card.
“How long are they going to keep me here?”
“To be determined, Sergeant. Do you feel you’re being inconvenienced?”
He didn’t rise to the bait.
“It’s been three days.”
“Not quite. Forty-seven hours and change.”
“Seems longer.” He didn’t even know that we’d already met. Not sure when I was going to spring that on him. It wouldn’t do anything to calm him down.
I opened my briefcase and took out a file folder.
“I’d like you to look at some photos,” I said and took two color eight-by-tens from my briefcase and laid them on the table. If I’d tossed a scorpion on the table he couldn’t have jerked back faster.
“Jesus Christ!”
I nodded at the print. “That’s her?”
“Fuck me,” muttered the sergeant. “Oh fuck me fuck me fuck me.”
Take that as a yes.
I sat back and waited him out. Sweat popped all along his forehead and leaked out from his hairline. He smelled like urine, cigarette smoke, and testosterone; but I could smell fear, too. A whole lot of it. I used to think that was a myth, or something only dogs and horses could smell; but lately I’ve learned different. The kind of shit I deal with I smell it a lot, and on myself, too. Like now, but I wasn’t going to let this asshole know it.