Its advantageous location prompted him to smile with cool satisfaction.
Zaheer turned into the defunct gas station before the light could change, then made a circular inspection of the property. He glided around the island where its uprooted pumps must once have stood, rolled past its empty cashier’s booth and peered into the vacant shell of its refreshment shop as he drove by the front window. Convinced the premises were deserted, he pulled his Mercury up to the screen of evergreens behind the shop, got out, and took a small digital camera from his coat pocket.
Zaheer stood near the trunk of the car and took a quick series of photos of the intersection’s four corners, paying special attention to the U-Haul rental lot. Then he turned toward the dying boundary trees, paused for a cautious glance over each shoulder, and stepped forward under their black, gangly boughs.
Hidden within the copse of pines, Zaheer could see the enormous storage tanks about a hundred and fifty feet ahead of him. Again his camera clicked. There was no fence barring access to the factory grounds from this approach. It would have been premature to assume the site was clear of security, he thought — a guard, or guards, might very well patrol it during certain hours. Almost beyond a doubt there would be an overnight watch in place. Men, perhaps dogs. But if anyone was on shift right now, Zaheer hadn’t noticed. Were it his desire, he could have easily walked right over to the tanks before it was possible to stop him… and when the time came to act, he had full faith there would be no need to get that close.
Al-hamdu lillahi, God had already brought him more than close enough, he thought in silence.
Zaheer stood there in the trees a while longer, observing the site and taking more than a dozen additional snapshots of the tanks for later reference. Then he returned the camera to his coat pocket and hastened back to the car.
Hasul Benazir would be pleased with the intelligence he had gathered today; all was falling well and neatly into place.
Nimec went down to Rollie Thibodeau’s office and found the door partially open. He knocked and walked through as Thibodeau looked up from his desk.
“Come right on in, why don’tcha?” Thibodeau said.
Nimec pushed the door shut behind him.
“This room been swept recently?” he asked.
Thibodeau met his gaze. He held a can of Diet Coke in his hand.
“Walls are clean, if that’s what you askin’,” he said.
Nimec approached him and sat. The room was windowless, as Thibodeau preferred. Stacks of paperwork hid the desktop. An old-fashioned upright balance scale stood in one corner, flaking pink paint. Thibodeau had once told him it was a memento of some kind from Louisiana.
“We have to talk,” Nimec said.
“Kinda got that sense.”
“Everything we say stays right here. Between us.”
Thibodeau nodded.
“I need you to tell me about Ricci,” Nimec said.
“You mind I use four-letter words?”
Nimec didn’t smile. He watched Thibodeau sip his cola, and then nod toward the water cooler.
“Be more sugar-free in the fridge compartment, you want some,” he said.
“No thanks, hate the stuff.”
Thibodeau patted his reduced stomach.
“Me, too,” he said. “But it works.”
Nimec watched him closely.
“I want to know what happened in Big Sur,” he said. “When Ricci got the boss’s daughter out of that cabin where she was held hostage.”
Thibodeau was silent. Nimec kept watching his face.
“Filed my report four months ago,” Thibodeau said.
“And I read it,” Nimec said. “Back when it was written, and a bunch of times since.”
“Ain’t no detail was left out.”
“No?”
“No.”
Nimec sat there studying his features with sharp interest.
“How about what you personally took from those details?” he said. “Nothing omitted there?”
“Like?”
“Suspicions,” Nimec said. “Possible conclusions.”
Thibodeau looked at him.
“I wrote down what I saw,” he said. “What I knew.”
“Sum it up for me again,” Nimec said.
“Thought you just said you been over the report.”
“Once more, Rollie.”
Thibodeau lifted the soda can to his lips, took a long swallow, and shrugged.
“Place had two floors,” he said. “Ricci’s in the lead, takes our extraction team through the back door. We see four men downstairs, get the drop on them—”
“We.”
“Everybody but Ricci, yeah,” Thibodeau said. “Soon’s we’re in, I see him run on up to the second floor, see his backup follow. Ricci knew Julia was in an upstairs room, shook it outta one of her kidnappers. Knew she was alone with Le Chaute Sauvage, a killer who’d snuff a man or woman’s life same way you’d blink an eye.”
“When you say his backup… this would have been Derek Glenn from our San Diego unit.”
“Right.”
“A guy Ricci pulled in on the operation,” Nimec said. “He got tight with him since they worked together a couple years back.”
Thibodeau shrugged.
“Tight as anybody can be,” he said. “Or so I hear.”
Nimec grunted. “Okay, give me the rest.”
Thibodeau spread his hands.
“Didn’t see much after Glenn went up,” he said. “I hear a crash on the second floor, what I can tell is a door bein’ kicked in. Can’t leave the first floor till we got a clamp on it. Disarm the prisoners, cuff ’em, get ’em all together in a single room. Then check and secure the other rooms. And there are attack dogs need to be sedated. Once we get it all under control, I take some of the men upstairs—”
“This is how long after the entry?” Nimec said.
“These things, you know they move in a flash.”
“About how long, Rollie?” Nimec said.
Thibodeau shrugged, his hands still wide apart.
“More’n five minutes, less’n ten,” he said. “By the time I’m upstairs, Julia’s out of the room. I see Glenn in the hall keepin’ her steady on her feet… the Killer had her tied to a chair with ropes, and there’s still little pieces of ’em hangin’ from her. I order the men to get her safe away, then head toward the room where Ricci found her, but the door’s propped shut.”
“This is after Ricci kicked it in.”
“Be better if you go over that with him,” Thibodeau said. “From what I heard afterward, Ricci found the Killer holdin’ a knife to Julia’s throat, got a trigger on him, warned him he moved a hair, he was gonna die. There a history between them to consider. Ricci was trackin’ him for over a year, after he bolted from that germ-weapon plant in Canada. That whole time, Le Chaute Sauvage was layin’ low to ground, knowin’ Ricci was breathin’ down his neck. History. Ricci uses it to get into his head, offers him a deal — the Killer lets Julia go free, they both lose their weapons, face off man to man.” He paused a moment. “The Killer’s a hired hand. Got no personal reason to hurt Julia, knows he’s dead if he uses the knife. He figures Ricci’s givin’ him his only chance, goes for it.”