The Rule Of Nine Part 15

"I understand," he says. "You did what you thought was best. You said you followed the two girls that night?"

"We did."

"Did you see anything? Anyone who looked suspicious? Might have been following them?"

"No. Nothing. Not that I noticed. Of course, I'm no pro. My investigator has a better eye for this stuff than I do and he didn't see anything either. And we were a fair distance away. We didn't want the girls to know."

"I understand."

"They went to a restaurant and a club; both places were crowded. It's possible he could have been close and we just couldn't see him."

"Do you have the names of these places?"

"I do."

I give them to him over the phone. Thorpe tells me he'll have some of his agents from the San Diego field office check it out to see if anyone who works there might have seen or heard something.

"a.s.suming it was him, do you think he could have made you?" says Thorpe.

"What do you mean?"

"If it was Liquida, do you think he might have seen you or your investigator and kept his distance until later?" asks Thorpe.

"The thought never entered my mind. You seemed to think it wasn't him."

"Have you told the police any of this?" he says.

"What's to tell? We didn't see anything."

"Of course." There's a long pause at the other end. "I don't know what to tell you. As soon as I got your first message, I had one of our agents contact San Diego homicide. He didn't find out much."

"Then am I safe to a.s.sume that the killer didn't leave a calling card this time?"

"Not that they found. At least not yet. We checked. We told them to pay particular attention to prints. Of course, they'd already dusted the place. They'll go back and take a second look. We told them anything they couldn't identify to run it through our computers. We'll authorize it to be expedited. We told them so."

"Did they ask you what your interest was?" I say.

"They did. We told them we couldn't discuss it unless there was evidence linking it to a couple of cases we have open. For the time being, unless they find something else, I'm afraid that's all I can do. Unless we can make some connection, we'd be hard pressed to say it's him."

"What about the MO, the knife and the wounds?"

"How did you know about that?" he asks.

"Local sources," I tell him.

"I see." Thorpe is wondering if I've talked to the cops and if so whether I've lied to him. "There's nothing there to connect it either to Afundi or to the kid in the apartment in D.C.," he says. "Liquida, if he exists at all, may use a knife, but we have no record of it."

Now, suddenly, it seems Liquida doesn't exist at all, but is a figment of my imagination.

"I didn't dream this guy up," I tell him. "You're the one who warned us about him. Remember?"

"Well, but we just don't know," said Thorpe.

"You have two matching thumbprints at two separate crime scenes, one of them on the back of one of my business cards. What is it exactly that you don't know?"

"Who those prints belong to for starters," says Thorpe.

"You can be sure of one thing. It's not a coincidence," I tell him.

"Of course not," he says.

"And according to my investigator-he talked to the paramedics-Jenny's death looked like a professional hit. This wasn't a girl who ran with drug dealers or g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers any more than Jimmie Snyder did," I tell him. "You can trust me on that one."

"I don't doubt you," says Thorpe. "But without more we can't connect your daughter's friend to the other two cases or to the prints."

"Do you know if the local police have any other suspects? Anybody of interest?" I ask him.

"According to our agent, at this time the answer's no. The detective in charge told him it was too early to know."

"So what do I do?" I ask.

I can hear him take a deep breath on the other end. "I really don't know what to tell you," he says.

TWENTY-ONE.

The old tarmac seemed to have more cracks than solid surface. With weeds sprouting up through the fissures, it looked like the prairie. Some of the taller gra.s.s came up to his hips. From a distance, as he drove in off the highway, Thorn could swear that he was looking at a farmer's fallow field instead of what it was: one of a score of abandoned army airfields left over from World War II. These dotted the island of Puerto Rico like the measles, as they were used to guard the entrance to the Panama Ca.n.a.l. Anyone with a map who wanted to take the time could find them.

Thorn spent the better part of two days surveying four of the old airfields. Two of them had landing strips that looked good on paper but were too short for the plane and its final cargo when he measured them. Some farmer had cut a trench across one of them before he realized that the old oil-soaked tar macadam and the three-foot gravel bed underneath it weren't exactly the best soil for growing crops.

The third field was long enough, with a good surface. It was well maintained. But there were too many prying eyes. The airstrip was a hangout for the local general aviation crowd. There was a small fleet, maybe a dozen single and twin-engine props. If he landed the big bird there, the amateur pilots would be crawling over it in minutes, asking him what he was doing and if they could watch.

This one, the prairie field, seemed to have everything Thorn needed. The oil surface looked as if it hadn't been sealed since the fifties. But the runway was long enough, and it would only have to take the heavy load twice, once coming in and once going out.

Thorn paced it off, taking nearly two hours to make sure there were no surprises. There were no buildings, just some footings and a large concrete slab, probably what was left of an old hangar. After a thorough inspection, Thorn decided that, all in all, it was in good shape.

Best of all was the location. It was isolated. The runway lay in a narrow valley between low-lying hills along a rugged stretch of coast about a mile in from the ocean.

If there was a place on the island where a large plane on a single approach might not attract much attention, this was it.

Thorn turned and looked out toward the sea. He planned it all out in his mind. If he dropped down, say, a hundred miles out, and skimmed the waves coming in, he could slip in under the radar from the airport in Mercedita ten miles to the south. The airport presented problems, but it also gave him cover. Anyone seeing the plane come in over the water would a.s.sume that he was either on an approach to the airport or was circling around for another shot.

His biggest concern was the AWAC flights manned by the U.S. military. These were large four-engine jets or prop jobs with radar domes on top. They flew regular missions over the Caribbean, mostly for drug interdiction. They were a problem for Thorn because he couldn't get under their radar. If they picked him up coming in, they would notify drug enforcement. Within minutes Thorn could expect a flyover from an unmanned drone or a helicopter doing followup surveillance. An hour later he'd be up to his hips in DEA agents with their dogs sniffing his crotch.

He turned and looked back at the runway. Somebody would have to knock down the weeds. Otherwise the friction from the wheels or the blast from the engines would start a fire. A man with a harvester could do it in a day, crop it all down close enough that it wouldn't matter. Thorn could rent a small combine harvester on the island, and one of his men could operate it.

He surveyed the trees at the far end of the field, mostly scrub brush with a small grove of tall palms casting long shadows in the late-afternoon sun. Some steel cable, a couple of come-alongs, and enough camouflage netting and they could fas.h.i.+on their own hangar. Taxi the plane under the trees, drop the netting, and no one would see it.

With the right equipment, supplies, and a little labor, they could kick the plane into shape in two weeks. Thorn would do a t.i.tle search, find out who owned the land, and lease it from them for six months.

He made a mental list of what they would need. At the top of the list was a wheeled electric starter motor for the engines, unless he could find his dream plane, an airliner that didn't require one. Most large commercial jets, once the engines were shut down, could not be restarted again without an external power source.

A good-size front-end loader rigged with a tow bar could push the plane around to maneuver it, that is, if they lined it up empty on the runway for takeoff before they fueled it. Some paint, welding equipment, and a load of Jet A fuel, and they were in business. Oh, yes. And one big mother of a bomb.

With the calculator running in his brain like the tape from an adding machine, Thorn already knew that the costs were going to climb faster and higher than the plane could fly. It was little wonder that no one had ever tried this before. Thorn hoped his employer's pockets were deep enough, because the good old days of hijacking somebody else's plane and flying it into a building were over.

Thorn headed for his car knowing that he'd done a good day's work. Halfway there, the new BlackBerry on his belt began to vibrate. The new phone was becoming a pain in the a.s.s. He had purchased it along with a data service plan under a two-year contract using a phony name, a bad billing address, and a stolen credit card. All he wanted to do was see how the thing worked.

It vibrated again. He knew it wasn't a phone call. Those rang. It was either an e-mail or something from the World Wide Web. Probably another ad from the phone company. It was reaching the point that Thorn wasn't sure if he would even wait until the end of the thirty-day billing cycle to drop the thing in a Dumpster. He couldn't sleep at night because it kept vibrating all over the nightstand next to him. And if he turned off the vibrator, it would beep instead. How to turn that off, he wasn't sure. The phone required an advanced degree in computer engineering before you could operate it. It was no joke that they'd offered him a two-day course over a weekend, and Thorn had just laughed. That was before he started losing sleep.

It vibrated again. He ripped the thing from the holster and tried to work the tiny roller ball with his big thumb. Thorn was spitting four-letter expletives, looking at the screen as he tried not to trip over the weeds.

It was an e-mail from Soyev. He was on his way back from North Korea, holding over in Hong Kong: "Big brother in the bag." What it meant was that the Russian had closed the deal on a replacement for the mammoth blockbuster they'd lost in Thailand. This one would s.h.i.+p by sea and not from North Korea, where the Americans would be watching. Other arrangements were being made.

There was a postscript: "You will be interested in the attached."

He almost put the phone away, figuring he would read it later. Then curiosity got the better of him. He stopped in the field for a moment and worked the trackball to call up the attachment.

It was a news article, something from the Was.h.i.+ngton Post. The moment he saw her name, he knew it was trouble. Thorn had been watching Joselyn Cole from the sidelines for years, ever since he'd tangled with her in Seattle.

She had very nearly run him into a hole in East Africa, exhorting the feds to hunt him down. Not that they needed much encouragement. Now she was causing problems again. Cole was a busybody. She was testifying before a Senate committee. But it was her words quoted in the story that sent a chill up Thorn's spine, the reason the Russian had sent it to him.

The h.e.l.lfire missile you use today to kill a carload of accused terrorists on a dusty road in Afghanistan may, in time, find its way into the hands of their children. What do we do then when this same relentless, unerring weapon is aimed at the West Wing or Ten Downing Street?

She was talking about precision-guided weapons. It made the hair on the back of Thorn's neck stand up.

These systems, originally designed and sold on the notion of avoiding collateral damage, have now become the weapon of choice for acts of very precise ma.s.s a.s.sa.s.sination. Think about that. We reap what we sow. A laser-guided missile can kill with more lethality and certainty than a bullet fired by a sniper. Why? Because it can reach its target in an enclosed vehicle or a building where the victim suffers from the illusion of security.

He should have killed her in Seattle, thought Thorn.

Make no mistake about it. Soon there will be no place left for leaders of any stripe to hide.

It was intended to get their attention, and it did. Standing in the empty field, rolling the little trackball, Thorn devoured the rest of the story. She took a few shots from the right, members who asked if she was equating Al Qaeda to leaders of recognized political states.

She told them they were missing the point.

For the most part the committee got the message. They wanted to know what they could do to ensure that this wouldn't happen, that someone wouldn't get their hands on these weapons and target their sorry a.s.ses.

Without even realizing it, Cole was directing the spotlight just where Thorn didn't need it, and at the worst possible time.

Of course, the b.i.t.c.h had a long list of recommendations, all of them designed to tighten the screws on the tools of Thorn's trade. To make it more difficult to get the weapons he needed. Not that she would ever be able to shut down the market. But she could surely make it expensive.

If she continued to whip this horse, he would have to find a way to shut her up. It would be just Thorn's luck if she stumbled into his party and somehow unraveled it all before he could move.

TWENTY-TWO.

So then I take it we're all agreed?" The four of us are seated around the kitchen table at our house in Coronado.

"I don't see that we have any other choice," says Harry.

Herman nods. "I agree." Three days since they found Jenny's body and we're all running on empty from lack of sleep.

"Well, I don't," says Sarah. "I don't like it. Besides, you're only doing this because of me. Why should we let him chase us out of our home?"

"We don't move, we're just playin' into his hand," says Herman. "He killed your friend to send us a message-that he can reach any one of us anytime he wants. If we move and do it the right way, we take that away from him."

"How do we know it's even him? How do we know he killed Jenny?"

"We know. Trust us on this," I tell her.

"Why can't we go to the police? Aren't they supposed to provide protection?" says Sarah.

"They gotta have evidence," says Herman. "So far they got nothing linking Liquida to Jenny's murder."

"At least not yet," I tell her. "We gave them his name and some other information. They're going to investigate-"

"You mean they can't provide protection?" says Sarah.

"They might send a patrol car by the house every few hours to keep an eye on us," I tell her. "But that's all."

"And that ain't gonna cut it," says Herman. "Not with this guy. His game is to play with our minds. Man's evil, but he's got patience. He knows that sooner or later we're gonna get tired, give it up, and go back to livin' a normal life. That's when he'll hit. He's toyin' with us like a cat that has one of his claws in a mouse."

"I should have taken Sarah and run," I tell them. "The minute Thorpe told us about Liquida. Jenny would still be alive."

"Maybe. But one of us'd be dead in her place," says Herman.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Harry or me," he says. "You gotta understand what you're dealin' with. Liquida's a mental case. One sick son of a b.i.t.c.h. Excuse my language." Herman glances toward Sarah, then looks at me. "If you run, it's the way he'd bring you back, reach out and kill somebody close. It's why I had you shut down the office."

"You closed the law office?" says Sarah.

"Had to," says Herman. "He killed Jenny, so what's to think he won't go after one of the secretaries? Can't take the chance."

Herman has managed to stay half a jump ahead of Liquida for the past few days. Otherwise, by now one of us would probably be dead. He is beginning to get a sense for the twisted mind that is shadowing us. Herman's take is that Liquida probably hasn't taken the time to tail any of our staff to their homes yet, because he thinks he has the four of us under gla.s.s, where we can't move.

"So we sent everybody from the office home," Herman explains to Sarah. "Told them to stay away from the office till they hear from us, and to take all the home addresses and other identifying information out of the office so Liquida can't find any of it. You did do that?" He looks at Harry.