Walking into the cabin, Michael took off his jacket and set it on the back of the couch. Seamus and Scott Coleman were sitting at the kitchen table. The greetings were curt. Michael apologized for being late and grabbed a mug out of the cupboard. While sitting down, he asked, “What in the hell are we going to do to stop this?” As Michael poured some coffee into his cup, he looked up for a response but got none. He took a gulp of coffee and asked, “Do we know any details about what happened to Turnquist?”
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Coleman said, “The Congressman was shot approximately twelve times at close range. Four U.S. marshals were also killed. The word is it was very clean and very professional. Not one of the marshals got a shot off.” Michael closed his eyes and asked, “Do we have any idea who is doing this or why?” Seamus shrugged his shoulders and said, “Erik and Turnquist have been in Washington for a long time. I’m sure they’ve made plenty of enemies over the years. The real question is, who would have the type of contacts to do something like this on such short notice?”
Coleman set his cup of coffee down and said, “I agree. We have to assume that whoever is behind this has the power and the connections to put together an operation like this in under a week. That shortens the list considerably.” Michael thought about the type of people who would have that kind of power and said, “Unfortunately, we don’t have any contacts that run in those circles.”
“I have a few,” said Coleman, “but if I start asking questions, they’ll want to know why I’m so interested.”
Seamus shook his head. “Bad idea. The last thing we want to do right now is draw attention to ourselves.”
“I agree,” said Michael, “but we have to do something.” Seamus pushed his coffee cup forward. “I have someone I can trust who is very connected in the intelligence community, or at least Was.”
“Who?” asked Coleman. “Augie Jackson.”
“Who is Augie Jackson?”
“He’s a very good … very old friend. We were in the Marines together during WW
Two. After the war he went to work for the CIA and went on to become one of the
Agency’s top European analysts. He retired about a year ago. He’s as honest a man as I’ve ever met.”
“How often do you keep in contact with him?”
“We talk at least once a month.
Every summer we fly into Canada for a couple of days of fishing, and I usually go down and see him in the fall for a little duck hunting ….
He lives in Georgia.”
“Do you think you can ask him what he thinks without drawing any attention to our involvement?” asked Michael. Seamus thought about it for a minute and said, “I think so.”
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“All right, see what you can find out. I trust Augie.” Michael took another sip of coffee. “Now, what do we do in the meantime?” Coleman leaned back and crossed his arms. “This is tough. In all of our planning we never predicted that something like this might happen.”
The former SEAL rolled his eyes. “I don’t know. something tells me we should lay low and see what happens. I think there’s still a good chance that the reforms will be implemented.” Michael said, “Absolutely not. You guys got this thing rolling, and you’re going to stop it before anyone else gets killed.”
Seamus stared at Michael. “We don’t have the contacts to go snooping around.”
“The FBI does.”
“So?”
“I think we need to alert them that someone else is involved in this.”
“What will that solve?” asked Seamus.
“If we call them, they’ll have to take us seriously. They will have to look into who would have the motive and the contacts to kill Erik and Congressman Turnquist. If they start asking questions and poking around, maybe it will scare these people away before they kill anyone else.”
Seamus frowned and Coleman said, “I don’t like the idea.” Michael placed his forearms on the table. “You two started this thing, and whether I like it or not, I’ve been dragged into it. I am not going to condemn you for what you’ve done, but I will if you sit around while more good men get killed. We are going to do everything we can to stop this other group from killing again even if it means getting caught.
Am I clear?”
Coleman and Seamus reluctantly nodded yes. The clock on the desk said it was 6:12
A.M Wednesday. McMahon was sitting in his chair with his face resting on a stack of reports. He’d left Turnquist’s house around midnight and came back to the Hoover
Building to brief Roach. Since then he’d been busy assigning new agents to Turnquist’s murder and preparing for an 8 A.M. briefing at the White House. Sometime around 5
A.M he’d laid his head down for a quick nap. He was too tired to get up and go over to the couch. The warning from Irene Kennedy and General Heaney that they could be spending more of their evenings standing over dead bodyguards and politicians had
McMahon a little discouraged. He knew how to pace himself through the ups and downs of an investigation, but this was more frantic than most. The bodies were no longer coming in one at a time, and now that some fellow law enforcement officers had been killed, the investigation had taken on a more personal tone. When it was just Senators and
