today, honey. And that means you and I got bad trouble.”
Payne had to laugh. Swagger wasn’t good, he was beyond good. He was so fucking good it was scary. He could hear the fear in Shreck’s voice. Forty-four men dead, including nine of his best guys who’d climbed aboard a chopper in an attempt to get some firepower on Bob from a new angle, and had been rewarded with a flaming death. Then, dozens wounded, Panther Battalion spread all over North Carolina, all kinds of cops hanging around, drawn by the smoke from the burning chopper, the whole thing a complete fuckup.
“Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“East. Your boyfriend’s gonna wanna meet you. We need you for that. You got a job to do for us.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I cap you here. You want that? You just drive with me in the desert. Chopper picks us up, ferries us to an airfield, where a private jet has us in a few hours. No sweat.”
“I’m the bait, that’s it? You think you’ll get Bob because you have me, is that it?”
“Lady, I don’t think the stuff up. I just follow orders.”
“Bob will eat you alive. Bob will chew you up and spit you out. You’re dead, you know that?”
Payne laughed. The bitch had some edge.
“There’s lots of blood between him and me, honey. Lots of it, and more to come. But I got one thing he wants, and that makes me a god to him.”
She looked at him.
“I got you, bitch.”
Deputy Director Howard D. Utey of the FBI was known far and wide in his own organization and several others in the federal security sector as the man who “got” Bob Lee Swagger.
This reputation had not done his career any harm; in fact, his recent promotion to the DD level and the fine corner office he now occupied on the fifth floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., was largely a result of the successful manhunt. Moreover, the image of the burning church, ingrained in the national subconscious, was a lesson to those who would trifle with the security of the president of the United States, a lesson provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and not the Secret Service, which had provided no lessons.
Everywhere he looked, all was serenity. He had nurtured contacts carefully over the course of his career, worked diligently, extracted maximum performance from those beneath him, formed relationships with powerful men, shed himself quickly of those who couldn’t perform and, most important, knew the difference, instantly, between those who could and those who couldn’t. He was careful to have men under him who were not quite as bright as he, and he particularly understood the dangers of talent, which was that while it was capable of producing spectacular results, it was just as apt to go off by itself to nurse obscure grudges or lick psychic wounds after gross expenditures of energy. Talent wasn’t consistent or loyal or pliant enough to be trusted; Howard deeply hated talent, and made certain that none of the men who worked for him ever had any talent. He’d driven seven talented men out of the Bureau and only one had stood against him, the idiot Nick Memphis, once so bright and brimming with enthusiasms, carefully betrayed at each step of the way, and yet stubborn in his refusal to leave the Bureau.
But now he had Nick at last. It was the hearing. Suspended agents are given two months off without pay and then are asked to present themselves at a certain time and place to defend their records. Most understand that their careers are over, and quietly turn in resignations, in exchange for good recommendations. Some fight the inevitable at the hearing, but Howard had always prevailed.
But nobody had ever done what Nick had just done. Nobody simply
Howard didn’t hate Nick. He looked on him as a young man who just never learned the lessons of the team. In Tulsa, Nick had blown his shot all those years ago by refusing to acknowledge Howard’s control. And look at how it had cost him and that poor young woman he ended up marrying.
Then in New Orleans, Nick had screwed up and screwed up again. It was as if he’d learned nothing from the hold that had been put on his career. He still thought he could do it his way, by his instincts, his talents and his guts. A supervisor cannot run a well-oiled, professionally disciplined unit under such circumstances.
Now Howard looked at the separation order before him. He had merely to sign it, as had three supervisors on the hearing board that Nick had ignored, and Nick was gone.
He never enjoyed this part. He was not a cruel man who relished his power. What he relished was the system itself and his own mastery of it. He believed that what was in his best interest was also in the Bureau’s best interest. Nick’s greatest sin was that he couldn’t be a team player. He couldn’t get with the program. Poor Nick. Doomed to be an outsider, a loser, his whole life.
Howard’s pen poised over the document. He paused, just a second, then -
“Ah, Mr. Utey?”
He looked up. It was his assistant.
“Yes, Robert.”
“Ah – ” Robert was distinctly uncomfortable, which was strange, for what had recommended Robert was his complete passivity. Robert had no personality whatsoever. Howard liked that in a man.
“Go on, Robert.”
“You’ll recall that strange shootout in North Carolina yesterday?”
“Yes.” Who could not recall it? Some drug war thing, forty-odd men killed, wounded Latinos babbling of ambush and slaughter, a DEA task force down there trying to shake it all out.
“Well, sir, they found over fifty-five 7.62mm shells atop that mountain.”
“Yes?”
“We just got the lab report. Latent prints got seven good completes and four partials. The computer spat them out a few minutes ago. Sir, I thought you should know immediately.”
Howard still didn’t see where this was headed. At his level, he was no longer responsible for on-site investigations. Wasn’t that Bob Mattingly over on the Bureau/ DEA liaison committee?
“Sir. Uh, the prints check out positively.”
“Check out
“Yes, sir. They’re Bob Lee Swagger’s.”
Howard looked at him. He let nothing show on his face. He felt a little something rise in his stomach.
“There must be some mistake. Swagger is dead and buried, we ID’d the corpse through forensics, everything was all – ”
“Sir, I’m only telling you what the computer said.”
“I see.”
“And sir, there was a rental automobile recovered at the site.”
“Yes?”
More bad news?
“Go on.”
“It was rented by Nick Memphis.”
Oh, Christ, thought Howard.
Nick came awake in the cab of the truck when Bob nudged him. He’d been dreaming about Sally Ellion, of all things. Sally was laughing at a joke he’d told her. There was something about Sally he really liked. It was -
But he blinked awake, somewhat chilly, aware of the jounce of the truck, the gray air of dawn. He wasn’t even sure when he’d fallen asleep.
“Time to get up, Nick,” said Bob.
“Yeah,” he said. “You want me to drive. No sweat.”
“No,” said Bob. “We’re almost there and it’s almost time.”
Nick looked around. He saw that they were headed up the access road toward an airport terminal. In the gray distance, a small jet was getting ready to take off.
