“Into the counter, I think. He didn’t get it up all the way,” North replied. Ryan turned his attention to Naomi. The pistol hadn’t moved from Elgin’s head. Her eyes were glazed over, her face pale.
“Naomi, it’s over,” he said in a soft voice as he gently pulled the pistol from her outstretched hand. Her leg was bleeding badly, but she didn’t seem to notice the pain.
“Get some pressure on that, North. I think she’s in shock. I need to talk to this bastard.” Ryan grabbed Elgin’s shirt collar and dragged the injured man toward the stockroom, ignoring the screams of pain as he pulled him over the floor littered with broken glass.
The rear of the building was a large, dark room stacked floor to ceiling with crates. Ryan propped Elgin up against the cool stone wall next to the door and searched him quickly but thoroughly. Satisfied that he had no other weapons, Ryan moved back into the bar and picked up the man’s knife.
“What the hell are you doing?” North demanded. He had located a first aid kit and was working on Naomi’s leg.
North’s eyes moved up from the weapon in the other man’s hand to Ryan’s face. The young DEA agent, several inches taller and 90 pounds heavier, abruptly shut his mouth and looked away. Ryan walked back toward the stockroom, his knuckles white around the rubber grip of the knife.
Thomas Elgin was leaning against the wall just as Ryan had left him, his breath coming in short, fast spurts. He looked up as Kealey entered the room, eyes defiant as he clutched his ruined leg.
“ Fuck you want, asshole?” he snarled.
Without saying a word, Ryan crouched and pushed the first inch-and-a-half of the knife into Elgin’s chest. He was rewarded by a shriek of agony as he twisted the handle to make the wound more difficult to close and to encourage blood flow. Ryan was well aware that he didn’t have a lot of time, and guessed that Elgin would be more motivated to talk if the hole in his chest was leaking at a steady rate.
In a low, menacing voice, he said, “I need some fast answers from you.”
“ What do you want, you sick fuck! ” Elgin screamed, twisting his body, desperately trying to get away from the knife. Kealey obliged and pulled it out of his chest. The injured man’s words didn’t seem to have any effect on him, though. This time, the serrated edge scraped across the protruding bone of Elgin’s mangled kneecap.
In the other room, Special Agent Adam North of the DEA shuddered as another unearthly scream echoed throughout the building. The howl of pain almost managed to drown out the sound of the approaching sirens as North finished applying the improvised pressure bandage to Kharmai’s thigh. She was starting to come around now, a spark visible in her large green eyes as her mouth moved in an attempt to speak.
“Take it easy,” he said. “You’re okay now. You did a great job.” It was a sincere compliment. For an intelligence analyst to be thrown into this kind of situation and react the way she did was an amazing thing. The sirens grew louder and the door burst open, paramedics swarming into the building. They were followed closely by officers from the Norfolk and Portsmouth police departments and a number of Virginia state troopers. As soon as they came through the front door, Ryan emerged from the stockroom, his face an impassive mask.
As the police officers secured the building, several returned from the back room with pale faces and immediately looked in Kealey’s direction. Confusion seemed to rule the day, but it wasn’t long before a consensus was reached, and a nervous officer put handcuffs on Ryan Kealey at the behest of the person now in charge, Captain Gina Nolan of the Norfolk Police Department.
CHAPTER 13
NORFOLK
“What the hell were you thinking, Ryan?”
Kealey and Harper were seated in the sterile interrogation room at Norfolk Police Headquarters. The irony was not lost on Ryan as the DDO questioned him from across the cold metal table. “I had to pull a lot of strings to get you out of this. I thought I told you to use kid gloves. Does that phrase mean anything to you?”
Kealey’s gaze drifted across the bare walls as the other man glared in his direction. “I realize it didn’t turn out the way we-”
“Ryan,” Harper’s voice lowered, even though the door was closed and there was no one else in the room. “Elgin had a lot to say about you. If he starts talking to the press, even the director won’t be able to contain the shit storm. Rightfully, this operation should have landed on the DEA’s doorstep. You went too far with him.”
Kealey looked to the upper corner of the room and saw that the camera used to monitor interrogations was disconnected, the wires hanging loose against the wall. He wondered why he had checked. “You said that the president cleared this, John. I did what was necessary.”
“Bullshit!” Harper tossed several photographs onto the table. “Pictures don’t lie. The Bureau can’t pressure Elgin because we have this hanging over our heads. In other words, we can’t force his hand because you took away our only leverage.”
“John-”
Harper held up his hand to silence the younger man. He stared at Ryan intently for a moment before quickly looking away. “Ryan, you went too far,” he repeated. The anger was gone from his voice, replaced by a weary resignation. “The director wants you out, and he’s going to get his wish if Elgin doesn’t open up. The State Department sent some people over to talk to the little bastard, but so far they’re coming up empty. I need you to give me some good news, because I’ve called in all my debts.”
“The boat that the explosives came in on is called Natalia; it’s a 25,000-ton container ship registered in South Africa. It has a regular route, making stops in Marseille and Rosslare in the south of Ireland before heading over to our East Coast.” Ryan looked up to catch Harper’s incredulous expression. “Jesus Christ, John, I didn’t go in there to make idle threats. This is what we needed, and now we have it. We don’t have time to waste with gentle persuasion, you said so yourself.”
“Well, why the hell did you keep me hanging on? This might be enough to save you — did he identify March?”
Kealey sighed and shook his head wearily. “I knew he wasn’t going to be able to. If Shakib had told March about the situation, then Elgin would be in a dirt-covered hole somewhere and we wouldn’t have gotten this far. I told you before, March is not given to making mistakes. He doesn’t believe in loose ends.”
The irony of this statement was immediately apparent to Jonathan Harper. Clearly, Jason March’s biggest mistake to date was not killing Ryan Kealey on that Syrian hilltop seven years earlier. But that thought had come unannounced, and it was incredibly disloyal. He felt ashamed that he had identified with a killer, even if only for a moment. It went against everything that he valued.
Ryan watched a myriad of emotions cross the other man’s face and wondered what he was thinking.
With Kealey’s contribution, the tension was gone from both men. It was still an interrogation room, though; the cold gray walls felt closer by the second, the scarred metal desk screamed confessions, and the disconnected camera seemed to watch over everything with an unwavering eye. Ryan was tired of it. He thought of Katie and for a moment felt better, lighter.
“I think I’ve done enough for today, John. Can you get me out of here, or did you just come down for the conversation?”
A sly grin eased itself across the older man’s face. “Who do you think you’re talking to, Junior?”
They departed the Norfolk Police Department less than a half hour later, both men down low in the backseat of a Chevy Suburban almost identical in appearance to Adam North’s. The heavily tinted windows shielded the occupants from the view of the few reporters savvy enough to stake out the department motor pool.
“I should have asked before, but how’s Naomi doing?”
“She’ll be fine,” Harper said. “North ran her over to the De Paul Medical Center. They stitched her up okay and gave her something for the pain. She’s checked into the Marriott Waterside. That’s where I’m taking you.”
“John-” Kealey started to protest, but was cut off just as fast.
“Ryan, you got what we needed. I want you to get some rest, because you’ll probably be moving out again tomorrow, depending on what we dig up. Everything else that needs to get done today is on my side of the fence, and if I show up at the DEA division office with you in tow, it’s going to cause more problems than it will solve. They aren’t too happy with you right now.” Kealey nodded his head in reluctant agreement as the vehicle turned
