‘A professional. One who isn’t afraid of penetrating a top military base to get what he’s after.’
One of the MPs laying out the white tape called out to them. He was fifty yards away, pointing into some brushwood. They hurried across and looked down. A large knife with a roughened bone handle and a serrated back ridge was lying on the ground.
The blade was red in blood.
‘A hunting knife,’ Pendry said. ‘He must have dropped it when he took off through the bushes.’
Harry looked at the MP. ‘I suggest you bag that carefully and get it to the forensics people,’ he said. ‘This might be the only evidence we get.’
The policeman nodded and began talking urgently into his radio. Pendry squatted and examined the knife where it lay.
‘It’s just a knife,’ he said. ‘Around here you’ll find a thousand just like it.’
‘Maybe,’ said Harry. ‘But there might be prints.’
Pendry shook his head and stood up. ‘What do we do now?’
‘We let the investigation team do their thing. He may have left more evidence behind. If so, they’ll find it.’ He looked up at the helicopter circling overhead a couple of hundred yards away, the down-draught swaying the branches of the trees.
Half a mile away, under cover of a line of scrubby bushes, Kassim watched through binoculars as the activity continued around the site where he had killed the American soldier. He could not see the black Ranger he had come looking for, but he knew he was there somewhere. Unfortunately, he was now untouchable, surrounded by heavily armed military personnel.
He regretted losing the knife, which had been ripped from his hand by a branch whipping back against his thumb. No doubt it would soon be picked up by the investigators and subjected to careful examination. It was inconvenient but hardly a disaster; he had no record in the United States, so any traces on the weapon would lead nowhere.
Now he had to get away from here and get cleaned up. There would be other chances to deal with Pendry, but not right now. Better to move on and come back another time. There was also the presence of the Englishman, Tate. He too would be fully alert, and any chance he had of approaching him was now gone.
He was thinking about money. He was going to have to call on the travel agent, Remzi, again, before he left America. He had enough cash for his immediate needs and his tickets, but the payment for the car had been more than he’d anticipated. After the cab driver had dropped him off the night before near a tired-looking backstreet workshop, he had found himself under scrutiny from three large, silent men in grubby overalls. A fourth man was using an oxyacetylene cutter on the wing of a beaten-up Chevrolet.
The haggling had been brief; take it or leave it. He had taken an aged Ford, victim of countless bruises and scrapes, but sound. They had thrown in directions for a cheap hotel and the location of a hunting store with flexible opening hours.
No doubt Remzi wouldn’t be pleased to hear from him again, but there was no other way. He slid out from his cover and wormed his way deeper into a belt of trees stretching away into the distance. It meant a long trek back to his car, but he was in no hurry. If they found it in the meantime, it would lead them nowhere.
It was early evening before Harry arrived back at the Holiday Inn. He was tired and tense, anxious to climb into the shower for an hour or so to wash off the dust of the training ground. By the time he and Carl Pendry had been through a lengthy grilling by the US Army investigators and local FBI special agents, called in on the advice of the base commander, the morning had turned into late afternoon. Harry had finally been allowed off the base, and knew it was so that they could shunt him out of the way. He had been helpful but was an outsider. Before leaving, Pendry had given him a direct number in case he needed to call.
He saw Rik in the doorway to the bar. He was holding a beer and fanning himself with a hotel brochure. Harry walked past him and ordered a beer; the shower could wait.
‘What’s up?’ he asked, as Rik sidled up alongside him and put his glass on the bar. The barman was out of earshot.
‘I’ve been monitoring the news channels. The local networks are going nuts. The most accurate is a soldier killed in a training accident, the worst is an entire platoon mown down by a crazed terrorist gunman. How bad was it?’
Harry gave him the basic facts. ‘If it wasn’t an attempt on Pendry, I’ll eat my feet.’
‘How did the killer find him? I checked the satellite photos — it’s a hell of a big area.’
‘Common knowledge. Most of the population here is either military, ex-military or knows someone employed on the base. And I hear there are army freaks who like to sneak in and watch the training. If our man knows what Pendry’s job is, it wouldn’t be too hard to find someone keen to brag about what was going on where, and pin down the location.’
Rik sipped at his beer. ‘He couldn’t have driven in; he’d have been spotted. He must have walked.’
‘And back out.’
Harry thought about Pendry’s comment about the man wearing camouflage jacket and pants. A place like Fort Benning was buzzing with security patrols and troop movements. But that would have worked to the killer’s advantage: who would question a man in combat clothing in the middle of a military training area? ‘At least we now know something else about him: he’s good at infiltration. Did you find anything else?’
‘Some basic background on the CP team members, but nothing specific to help us. Bikovsky’s the only one who jumps out.’
‘Why?’
‘I picked up a couple of reports from newspaper archives. He was arrested once for drink driving as a kid, then for assault in San Diego, but released without charge. That’s all it said. When I tried to dig deeper, I hit a lot of empty space.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It’s like the records have been sanitized.’
Harry looked at him. ‘That doesn’t sound good.’
‘Exactly what I thought.’ Rik checked his watch. ‘I’m meeting a guy later who’s got a back door into state court and justice records. He might be able to find out more.’
‘You found someone here? How?’
Rik gave a faint smirk. ‘I put out a call. There’s always someone around if you know who to ask.’ Rik had numerous friends and contacts in the shadowy world of computer hackers, most of them embracing anonymity and wary of coming out of their dark corners into the daylight. Harry had met a couple, pale-skinned and unhealthy specimens who would go through fire and water to breach a firewall or step into forbidden cyber territory just to prove that they could. A bit like Rik himself.
But he didn’t like the idea of an outsider becoming involved. ‘Couldn’t you do it?’
‘Not like this guy. He’s got a rep for digging into Department of Justice files. He knows his way round.’ He tried to look modest and failed. ‘I could do it, but it would take me longer — and I’d probably trip over something.’
‘Can you trust him?’
‘Yeah. I’ve got something he wants.’
‘Money?’
‘A name. A contact in the community.’
Harry said nothing. If Rik was offering a name, it had to be someone the unknown hacker wanted to get to, someone higher up the ladder of IT geekdom.
‘You want me to come?’
Rik rolled his eyes. ‘Get off. He’d shit a streak if he saw you.’
‘How quaint. What’s so scary about me?’
‘You look like you represent The Machine, that’s what.’ Rik did bunny ears with his fingers and drawled, ‘Like, Establishment, dude.’
Rik was pulling his chain. He changed the subject. ‘What about Koslov — anything new?’
‘Other than the details Deane gave you, no. No photos, either. He’s either left the army and gone into private work, or he’s gone off the grid for other reasons.’
Harry knew what that meant: Koslov was either using his military training and skills working for some rich oligarch, or was now employed by the Russian government in a quasi-military capacity. He’d already fed the number into his mobile along with Pendry’s and Bikovsky’s. He’d try him when he got a moment.