rusty brown mixture. “That is blood and I think feces and I’m sure urine as well.” Zahir had seen many men shit themselves when interrogated, but he didn’t think now was a good time to offer this knowledge.
“What was the big ones’ name, again?” Coleman asked. He had his phone out and was about to send the name back to the Intel Fusion Center. Zahir spelled it for him and Coleman sent the message. If Zahir knew who he was, it was likely the name would pop up in one of their databases.
Rapp stepped around the putrid liquid to get a better look at the two men. They both had bruised knuckles and their hands were swollen. Just beyond the bodies were two rubber hoses, more evidence that this was the place where Rickman had been interrogated. He counted no fewer than four bullet holes in each man. The image of the dead bodyguards lined up in the safe house came back to him. This murder scene couldn’t have been more different. “Look at this,” Rapp said to Coleman. “Remember Rick’s four guys, each one with a single bullet hole.”
“Yeah,” Coleman said, “this was done by someone who was pissed off.” He turned around and looked at the other two walls. As far as he could tell they didn’t have any pockmarks from bullets. This wasn’t a gunfight, it was an execution.
Rapp noticed the video camera and tripod knocked over on the floor. They needed Hayek down here. Rapp reached up and grabbed the lip mike from the side of his helmet. He swung it down and hit the two-way button on his Motorola radio. “Sid, this is Harry, over.”
“I’m here.”
“Did you bring any masks? It smells pretty bad down here.”
“Yeah, I have some.”
“Good, grab your gear and come on in. I’ll meet you on the first floor.
“Harry,” the voice crackled over the radio, “Our boss is out of that meeting and she’s not very happy with you.”
Rapp’s memory was still a little spotty but he got the feeling that this wasn’t the first time she’d been mad at him. “Tell her I’m 97 percent sure we found the place where Rick was interrogated. That should calm her down a bit. I’ll meet you by the front door.” Rapp flipped the lip mike back up and started for the stairs.
“This is pretty fucking ballsy,” Coleman said.
“What’s that?”
“We’re a block and half from the safe house. We’re looking all over the planet for him and he was here, just a couple hundred yards away. I hate to admit it, but it’s a pretty fucking smart move. Who would have ever thought of looking this close?”
Coleman’s words triggered something familiar in Rapp’s mind. His brain was still having some issues, like it knew what it was searching for but it was stuck in that pinwheel mode that a computer went into when it couldn’t get out of program.
Coleman could see he’d triggered something. “What are you thinking about?”
“I don’t know. I think something you said is important, but the old noggin still isn’t working quite right.”
“It’ll come.”
Rapp stepped into the other room and Zahir followed him. “Mr. Harry, are you satisfied?”
Rapp stopped on the first step and looked back at the corrupt police officer. He sighed and reluctantly said, “Yes, Abdul, you’ve done a good job.” Rapp climbed two more steps and then thought of something. “Abdul, how did you discover these bodies?”
Zahir wanted to tell him that it was through his contacts, but he was afraid the American would discover the truth. The man was no longer mad at him, so he said, “We received an anonymous call at the police station.”
“Anonymous?”
“Yes.”
That sounded funny to Rapp. They were offering thousands of dollars in cash to anyone who could help them find Rickman. You would think someone would want to collect that money. Rapp shook his head and started up the stairs again with Ashan in tow.
“Mr. Harry, I would just like to say that I am sorry we started off on the wrong foot.”
“Me too, Abdul, but maybe we can start over.” Rapp stopped in the front entryway, sidestepping the robot.
“I would like that.”
Rapp thought of something else. “Good. Now you need to find Mr. Hubbard. Alive preferably.”
Zahir hemmed and hawed and then asked, “Is there a reward?”
Rapp should have expected it. Guys like Zahir never changed. “Fifty grand… maybe more, depending on how hard you have to work.”
Zahir smiled. This was a huge relief. He much preferred doing business this way. His joy was short-lived, however.
Rapp pointed the muzzle of his rifle at Zahir’s chest and said, “But if I find out you’re fucking me, or that you had a hand in any of this, you’re dead.”
Chapter 40
Hayek had donned her white paper suit, hood, and booties. She wore her mask and kicked everyone out of the house, including the bomb techs. For more than an hour she thoroughly photographed everything, and in the room where the torture had taken place she took two samples of every fluid she could potentially identify. When she’d been with the FBI, they would have had no fewer than six agents combing over a crime scene like this. She was well aware that she was likely missing a bevy of potential evidence, but her focus here was very different from that of an agent collecting evidence that would be challenged in a courtroom. Her immediate goal was pretty straightforward-she needed to be able to tell Kennedy with near certainty that Joe Rickman had in fact been in this room.
Even as Hayek carefully collected her evidence she knew what she would recommend to Kennedy. She needed to bring in a forensic team from the Joint Expeditionary Forensic Laboratory at Bagram or have the FBI send one of their teams over. Kennedy wouldn’t like the idea of bringing in someone from outside the Agency, but the truth was the CIA didn’t have the capability to do this job at the level it needed to be done. Hayek’s preference was the FBI, but she recognized that she was biased from having worked with them.
When she was finished collecting all of her samples, she was left with one small dilemma. On the floor, across the room from the two dead men, was a digital camera with a tripod screwed into the bottom. It appeared the camera had been knocked over, as only a small wire tethered the viewfinder. Several pieces of the camera’s black plastic casing were also cracked and broken. If the FBI were going to get involved they would want her to leave the camera where it was so they could follow their own strict protocols for evidence collection. Hayek was no electronics expert, but she knew that some cameras came equipped with internal memory drives as well as slots for removable memory cards. Using her gloved hands she cradled the camera as if it were a bird with a broken wing. She carefully turned it over in her hands and saw that the slot for the memory card was empty. She was about to leave the camera when she decided that would be foolish.
Hayek chastised herself. There were times where she still thought too much like a law enforcement officer and not enough like a member of the Clandestine Service. The priority was to get Kennedy as much information as possible as quickly as possible. She could always hand the camera over to the FBI later, along with the photographs that would show where she’d found the camera. She carefully unscrewed the tripod from the bottom and placed the camera in a clear evidence bag.
When she stepped into the afternoon sun, she saw that everyone was in a far more relaxed posture.
Rapp was standing just inside the gate with Coleman, who looked like he was about to fall asleep. Rapp asked, “How did it go?”
Hayek pulled the paper hood off her head and the mask from her face. “I’ve got what we need to get a start, but we need to get someone in there to go over the entire house.”
“Like who?” Rapp asked.
“Probably one of the FBI’s forensic teams.”
