anyone.”
“So he’s a real scumbag,” Sierra said.
“Rich scumbag,” Joe added.
“Would be if it were true, but we’re merely supposing here.”
“Why is he killing families?” Stephanie asked.
Paul lit a cigarette and paused while he thought.
“Martin was caught with stolen cocaine secreted in his house, and convicted of possession with intent to distribute. Stolen cash and drugs and a fifty-year sentence of which he would do every single day. Fletcher insisted he was framed.”
“He thinks we, the DEA, sold him out?” Sean Merrin said.
“We’re going to always tell the truth in this unit, and anything said between us is privileged information. Agreed?”
The heads nodded almost in unison.
“The agency suspected him of selling DEA field agents for cash and favors and taking drug profits through a network of Latin bank accounts.”
“Was he framed?” Sean asked.
Thorne’s eye met Paul’s for a split second. Nothing had ever been committed to paper on the operation designed to put Martin away.
“Of course not. He’s just crazy,” Thorne said. “Paranoia is his reality.”
Paul wanted to come clean, but that wasn’t the way it worked. Need to know. Fewer mouths to worry about down the road.
He cleared his throat. “Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking of our target as a human being. Martin Fletcher is an animal just as surely as a mountain lion is an animal. I arrested him and testified against him. I regret not putting one behind his ear and burying the carcass in a swamp. If I had, at least eight innocent people would be alive right now.”
Paul looked each of the new agents in the eye. “Martin, not being the forgiving sort, swore revenge and he has been getting it.”
“How did he get out of prison?” Stephanie asked.
“Friends of friends broke him out.”
“Broke him out?” Sierra said.
He nodded. “It was well planned and executed flawlessly. Out of prison and out of the country within hours. It is my understanding that he had a direct flight. Accompanied by his common-law wife and son.”
Rainey slammed his hand on the table, and all eyes went to him. He smiled nervously.
Paul cleared his throat and looked at Thorne and Joe. “There was an incident with renegade soldiers in the jungle in Guatemala. His wife, Angela, and his son were killed. Martin went off the deep end. We think elements of the CIA set him up.”
Thorne shook his head sadly.
“The attack on us in Miami happened a few days before he escaped.” Paul ran his hand along the side of his head, the bristles of hair foreign to his fingers. He had cut his hair back into a modified GI, and he felt naked without the additional cover. He reached up to twist his mustache and realized that he was clean shaven. “He left a note at the scene of his last killing with his fingerprints on it” Paul triggered the remote control, and a photocopy of a note appeared on the white wall.
Masterson,
We are even for Angela and Macon.
It’s over if you let it lay, and I am nothing more than a lingering aftertaste.
Come after me and I will present you with Laura, Adam, and Erin’s hearts in a bowl.
“What if he does know we’re there?” Sean repeated. “He’ll know you’re after him.”
“I expect him to know,” Paul said. “He knew I would come before he wrote that note. We’re going after Martin with everything we have, run him into a corner and neutralize him.”
They all understood.
Paul looked at the young agents, who were in turn looking at the older men.
“Sir, this all seems highly unusual,” Stephanie Martin said.
Thorne put his head in his hands and sighed loudly.
Paul said, “None of you should stay if you have any reservations about this effort. Although it has been authorized, I assure you that if anything goes wrong, if one innocent civilian goes down under any of our weapons, we will not find a roof over our heads or a net below us. I have no career to consider. You do.”
“But this is a murder investigation. We’re DEA,” she said. “How do we… I mean, what’s the cover?”
Paul smiled. “Officially, the agency is investigating someone dealing massive amounts of drugs, and we’re trying to gather evidence on that if possible. Our cover includes the capture of a federal fugitive if we run across him. In our capacity as bounty hunters our powers are expanded. We may pursue Martin Fletcher wherever we have reason to believe he has gone. We may search any premises where we think he may be hiding. We may use any necessary force to achieve our goals.”
The agents’ faces were hard to read, but Paul was prepared to replace the whole group if he had to. He sipped from a cup of coffee that had cooled. “This is not a training exercise. This is the real thing, and lives depend on your accuracy, stealth, and speed. You are all to follow my orders, and the orders of these men, to the letter. If you have a creative idea, they’ll want to hear it.”
“Are you… we going to kill him?” Stephanie asked.
Paul frowned as he weighed what he should tell them. He didn’t want to be haunted by the answer. “First off, you people on surveillance in Charlotte shouldn’t fret that one too much. It isn’t likely that your team will ever be faced with that decision. There is another group assigned to follow your target once she has left Charlotte and lands someplace else. They will be faced with that dilemma.”
Paul was aware of Thorne and Joe shifting in their seats and exchanging glances.
“You’ll be following her, monitoring her until she is off the plane at her destination,” he said.
She looked confused by his answer.
Don’t leave it there. “Ms. Martin, Stephanie, if we do somehow capture him, he’ll never make it to prison again. Kill him? Let me say this for all of you. If you can kill him and don’t, you will almost certainly be sentencing others to death. He cannot get away. Think of our Martin Fletcher as a mad dog who’s going to enter a playground filled with children unless you stop him. He will see you as a bug standing between him and freedom.”
Thorne Greer cleared his throat sharply before speaking.
“Do not engage Martin Fletcher one on one under any circumstances. Do not allow him to engage you in conversation. He is a master, and whatever you think of your own skills, remember that he can use anything at hand as a weapon. He has never been seriously hurt, but his adversaries have been-those who lived. Unlike imaginary monsters, however, he is as vulnerable to a lead bullet as any of us.” Thorne said.
Paul scanned the faces of the new agents. For a brief couple of seconds his mind flashed a clear memory of the faces of Hill and Barnett, the two agents who had been standing with him in Miami when the container was opened. He turned away and took a deep breath.
Paul remembered the two dead agents, the wives, the children of Joe Barnett, a Mississippi boy with an accent as thick as a gambler’s flash roll. Jeff Hill’s young wife had sent Paul the flag that had been taken off Jeff’s casket. Paul believed he knew what her message was: You killed those two boys. Did I? Maybe I did. I must have. Else why do they haunt me, wander about in my dreams?
Paul’s mind went back to the Miami office that had been, and still was, the nation’s epicenter of drug activity and the springboard for his promotion to deputy director of the DSF. God, he had been driven in those days. The dealers with their big houses, expensive cars, and women, the glitz and glamour-he had gone after them like a hellhound.
He realized that Thorne had finished his speech pertaining to the technology they would be using in the field. His eye met Woodrow Poole’s, and for a split second he read something disquieting in them.
“I’m sorry. Sometimes I…” He looked around the table. “I’m delighted with the team we have here. I asked for the best and brightest and most enthusiastic agents. There isn’t anything for me to add about Martin. Except one last bit of advice. If you have him identified, shoot to kill. You get a chance during a moment of weakness or
