“Shit.” Ussery thought of that legal opinion. Kiddie porn was one of the Bureau’s pet hates, and Innocent Images had turned into a high-priority nationwide investigation, run from the Baltimore Field Division.
O’Connor nodded. “That’s exactly what Bert said, Chuck.”
“So, nothing happening yet?”
“Nothing worthwhile. We have a few more of Mary’s friends to interview—five are set up for tomorrow, but if anything breaks loose, my bet’s on New York. Somebody must have known her. Somebody must have dated her. But not here, Chuck. She left Gary and didn’t look back.”
Ussery frowned, but there was no fault to be found with O’Connor’s investigative procedures, and there was a total of twelve agents working the Bannister case. Such cases ran and broke at their own speed. If James Bannister called, as he did every day, he’d just have to tell him that the Bureau was still working on it, then ask him for any additional friends he might have forgotten to list for the Gary team of agents.
CHAPTER 25
SUNRISE
“You didn’t stay very long, sir,” the immigration inspector observed, looking at Popov’s passport.
“A quick business meeting,” the Russian said, in his best American accent. “I’ll be back again soon.” He smiled at the functionary.
“Well, do hurry back, sir.” Another stamp on the well-worn passport, and Popov headed into the first-class lounge.
Grady would do it. He was sure of that. The challenge was too great for one of his ego to walk away, and the same was true of the reward. Six million dollars was more than the IRA had ever seen in one lump sum, even when Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi had bankrolled them in the early 1980s. The funding of terrorist organizations was always a practical problem. The Russians had historically given them some arms, but more valuably to the IRA, places to train, and operational intelligence against the British security services, but never very much money. The Soviet Union had never possessed a very large quantity of foreign exchange, and mainly used it to purchase technology with military applications. Besides, it had turned out, the elderly married couple they’d used as couriers to the West, delivering cash to Soviet agents in America and Canada, had been under FBI control almost the entire time! Popov had to shake his head. Excellent as the KGB had been, the FBI was just as good. It had a long-standing institutional brilliance at false-flag operations, which, in the case of the couriers, had compromised a large number of sensitive operations run by the “Active Measures” people in KGB’s Service A. The Americans had had the good sense not to burn the operations, but rather use them as expanding resources in order to gain a systematic picture of what KGB was doing—targets and objectives—and so learn what the Russians hadn’t already penetrated.
He shook his head again, as he walked off to the gate. And he was still in the dark, wasn’t he? The questions continued to swarm: Exactly what was he doing? What did Brightling want? Why attack this Rainbow group?
Chavez decided to set his MP-10 submachine gun aside today and concentrate instead on his Beretta .45. He hadn’t missed a shot with the Heckler & Koch weapon in weeks—in this context, a “miss” meant not hitting within an inch of the ideal bullet placement, between and slightly above the eyes on the silhouette target. The H&K’s diopter sights were so perfectly designed that if you could see the target through the sights, you hit the target. It was that simple.
But pistols were not that simple, and he needed the practice. He drew the weapon from the green Gore-Tex holster and brought it up fast, his left hand joining the right on the grip as his right foot took half a step back, and he turned his body, adopting the Weaver stance that he’d been taught years before at The Farm in the Virginia Tidewater. His eyes looked down, off the target, acquiring the pistol’s sights as it came up to eye level, and when it did, his right index finger pulled back evenly on the trigger—
—not quite evenly enough. The shot would have shattered the target’s jaw, and maybe severed a major blood vessel, but it would not have been instantly fatal. The second shot, delivered about half a second later, would have been. Ding grunted, annoyed with himself. He dropped the hammer with the safety-decock lever and reholstered the pistol. Again. He looked down, away from the target, then looked up. There he was, a terrorist with his weapon to the head of a child. Like lightning, the Beretta came up again, the sights matched up and Chavez pulled back his finger. Better. That one would have gone through the bastard’s left eye, and the second round, again half a second later, made the first between-the-eyes hole into a cute little figure-eight.
“Excellent double-tap, Mr. Chavez.”
Ding turned to see Dave Woods, the range master.
“Yeah, my first was wide and low,” Ding admitted. That it would have blown half the bastard’s face right off was not good enough.
“Less wrist, more finger,” Woods advised. “And let me see your grip again.” Ding did that. “Ah, yes, I see.” His hands adjusted Chavez’s left hand somewhat. “More like that, sir.”
Shit, Ding thought. Was it that simple? By moving two fingers less than a quarter of an inch, the pistol slipped into a position as though the grip had been custom-shaped for his hands. He tried it a few times, then reholstered again and executed his version of a quick-draw. This time, the first round was dead between the eyes of the target seven meters away, and the second right beside it.
“Excellent,” Woods said.
“How long you been teaching, Sergeant Major?”
“Quite some time, sir. Nine years here at Hereford.”
“How come you never joined up with SAS?”
“Bad knee. Hurt it back in 1986, jumping down off a Warrior. I can’t run more than two miles without its stiffening up on me, you see.” The red mustache was waxed into two rather magnificent points, and the gray eyes sparkled. This son of a bitch could have taught shooting to Doc Holliday, Chavez knew at that moment. “Do carry on, sir.” The range master walked off.
“Well, shit,” Chavez breathed to himself. He executed four more quick-draws. More finger, less wrist, lower the left hand a skosh on the grip . . . bingo . . . In three more minutes there was a two-inch hole right in the middle of the instant-incapacitation part of the target. He’d have to remember this little lesson, Ding told himself.
Tim Noonan was in the next lane over, using his own Beretta, shooting slower than Chavez, and not quite as tight in his groups, but all of his rounds would have driven through the bottom of the brain, and right into the stem, where instant kills happened, because that was where the spinal cord entered the brain. Finally, both ran out of ammunition. Chavez took off his ear-protectors and tapped Noonan on the shoulder.
“A little slow today,” the technical expert observed, with a frown.
“Yeah, well, you dropped the fucker. You were HRT, right?”
“Yeah, but not really a shooter. I did the tech side for them, too. Well, okay, I shot with them regularly, but not quite good enough for the varsity. Never got as fast as I wanted to be. Maybe I have slow nerves.” Noonan grinned as he field-stripped his pistol for cleaning.
“So how’s that people-finder working out?”
“The damned thing is fucking magic, Ding. Give me another week and I’ll have the new one figured out. There’s a parabolic attachment for the antenna, looks like something out of Star Trek, I guess, but goddamn, does it find people.” He wiped the parts off and sprayed Break-Free on them for cleaning and lubrication. “That Woods guy’s a pretty good coach, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, well, he just fixed a little problem for me,” Ding said, taking the spray can to start cleaning his own service automatic.
“The head guy at the FBI Academy when I was there did wonders for me, too. Just how your hands match up on the butt, I guess. And a steady finger.” Noonan ran a patch through the barrel, eyeballed it, and reassembled his pistol. “You know, the best part about being over here is, we’re about the only people who get to carry guns.”
“I unders
tand civilians can’t own handguns over here, eh?”
“Yeah, they changed the law a few years ago. I’m sure it’ll help reduce crime,” Noonan observed. “They started their gun-control laws back in the ’20s, to control the IRA. Worked like a charm, didn’t it?” The FBI agent laughed. “Oh, well, they never wrote down a Constitution like we did.”
“You carry all the time?”
“Hell, yes!” Noonan looked up. “Hey, Ding, I’m a cop, y’dig? I feel naked without a friend on my belt. Even when I was working Lab Division in Headquarters, reserved parking space and all, man, I never walked around D.C. without a weapon.”
“Ever have to use it?”
Tim shook his head. “No, not many agents do, but it’s part of the mystique, you know?” He looked back at his target. “Some skills you just like to have, man.”
“Yeah, same for the rest of us.” It was a fillip of British law that the Rainbow members were authorized to carry weapons everywhere they went, on the argument that as counterterror people they were always on duty. It was a right Chavez hadn’t exercised very much, but Noonan had a point. As Chavez watched, he slapped a full magazine into the reassembled and cleaned handgun, dropped the lever to close the slide, then after safing the weapon, ejected the magazine to slide one more round into it. The gun went back into his hip holster, along with two more full magazines in covered pockets on the outside. Well, it was part of being a cop, wasn’t it?
“Later, Tim.”
“See you around, Ding.”
Many people can’t do it, but some people simply remember faces. It’s a particularly useful skill for bartenders, because people will come back to establishments where the guy at the bar remembers your favorite drink. This was true at New York’s Turtle Inn Bar and Lounge, on Columbus Avenue. The foot patrolman came in just after the bar opened at noon and called, “Hey, Bob.”
“Hi, Jeff, coffee?”
“Yeah,” the young cop said, watching the bartender get some Starbuck’s from the urn. Unusually for a bar, this place served good coffee, since that was the yuppie thing in this part of town. One sugar and some cream, and he passed the cup over.
Jeff had been on this beat for just under two years, long enough that he knew most of the business owners, and most of them knew him and his habits. He was an honest cop, but never one to turn down free food or drink, especially good donuts, the American cop’s favorite food.
“So, what’s shakin’?” Bob asked.
“Looking for a missin’ girl,” Jeff replied. “Know this face?” He handed the printed flyer over.
“Yeah, Annie something, likes Kendall Jackson Reserve Chardonnay. Used to be a regular. Haven’t seen her in a while, though.”
“How about this one?” The second flyer went across the bar. Bob looked at it for a second or two.
“Mary . . . Mary Bannister. I remember that, ’cuz it’s like the thing on a set of steps, like you know? Haven’t seen her in a while, either.”
The patrolman could hardly believe his luck. “What do you know about them?”
“Wait a minute, you said they’re missing, like kidnapped or something?”
“That’s right, man.” Jeff sipped his coffee. “FBI is on this one.” He tapped the Bannister photo. “The other one we turned.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. Don’t know much about them. Used to see ’em both here couple days a week, they dance and stuff, you know, like single girls do, trolling for guys.”
“Okay, tell you what, some people will be in here to talk to you about ’em. Think about it, will ya?” The cop had to consider the possibility that Bob was the one who’d made them disappear, but there were chances you had to take in an investigation, and that likelihood was pretty damned slim. Like many New York waiters and bartenders, this guy was an aspiring actor, which probably explained his memory.
“Yeah, sure, Jeff. Damn, kidnapped, eh? Don’t hear very much about that stuff anymore. Shit,” he concluded.
“Eight million stories in the Naked City, man. Later,” the patrolman said, heading for the door. He felt as though he’d done a major portion of his day’s work, and as soon as he got outside, he used his epaulet-mounted radio microphone to call the newly developed information into his precinct house.
Grady’s face was known in the U.K., but not the red beard and glasses, which, he hoped, would obscure his visage enough to reduce the chance of being spotted by an alert police constable. In any case, the police presence wasn’t as heavy here as in London. The gate into the base at Hereford was just as he’d remembered it, and from there it wasn’t a long drive to the community hospital, where he examined the roads, shoulders, and parking areas and found them to his liking, as he shot six rolls of film with his Nikon. The plan that started building in his mind was simple, as all good plans were. The roads seemed to work in his favor, as did the open ground. As always, surprise would be his primary weapon. He’d need that, since the operation was so close to the U.K.’s best and most dangerous military organization, but the distances told him the time factor. Probably forty minutes on the outside, thirty on the inside to make the plan work. Fifteen men, but he could get fifteen good men. The other resources money could purchase, Grady thought, as he sat in the hospital parking lot. Yes, this could and would work. The only question was daylight or nighttime. The latter was the usual answer, but he’d learned the hard way that counter-terror teams loved the night, because their night-vision equipment made the time of day indistinguishable in a tactical sense—and people like Grady were not trained to operate as well in the dark. It had given the police an enormous advantage recently at Vienna, Bern, and Worldpark. So, why not try it in broad daylight? he wondered. It was something to discuss with his friends, Grady concluded, as he restarted the car and headed back toward Gatwick.
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it since Jeff showed me the pictures,” the bartender said. His name was Bob Johnson. He was now dressed for the evening, in a white tuxedo shirt, black cummerbund, and bowtie.
“You know this woman?”
“Yeah.” He nodded positively. “Mary Bannister. The other one is Anne Pretloe. They used to be regulars here. Seemed nice enough. They danced and flirted with the men. This place gets pretty busy at night, ’specially on weekends. They used to come in around eight or so, then leave at eleven or eleven-thirty.”
“Alone?”
“When they left? Most of the time, but not always. Annie had a guy she liked. His name’s Hank, don’t know the last name. White, brown hair, brown eyes, about my size, growing a gut, but not really overweight. I think he’s a lawyer. He’ll probably be in tonight. He’s pretty regular here. Then there was another guy . . . maybe the last time I saw her here . . . what the hell’s his name . . . ?” Johnson looked down at the bar. “Kurt, Kirk, something like that. Now that I think of it, I saw Mary dancing with him, too, once or twice. White guy, tall, good-lookin’, haven’t seen him in a while, liked whiskey sours made with Jim Beam, good tipper.” A bartender always remembered good and bad tippers. “He was a hunter.”
“Huh?” Agent Sullivan asked.
“Huntin’ for babes, man. That’s why guys come to a place like this, you know?”
This guy was a godsend, Sullivan and Chatham thought. “But you haven’t seen him in a while?”
“The guy Kurt? No, couple of weeks at least, maybe more.”
“Any chance that you could help us put a picture together?”
“You mean the artists’ sketch thing, like in the papers?” Johnson asked them.
“That’s right,” Chatham confirmed.
“I suppose I can try. Some of the gals who come in here might know him, too. I think Marissa knew him. She’s a regular, in here nearly every night, shows up around seven, seven-thirty.”
“I guess we’re going to be here awhile,” Sullivan thought aloud, checking his watch.
It was midnight at RAF Mildenhall. Malloy lifted the Night Hawk off the ramp and set off west for Hereford. The
controls felt just as tight and crisp as ever, and the new widget worked. It turned out to be a fuel-gauge widget, digitized to tell him with numbers rather than a needle how much fuel he had. The switch also toggled back and forth between gallons (U.S., not Imperial) and pounds. Not a bad idea, he thought. The night was relatively clear, which was unusual for this part of the world, but there was no moon, and he had opted to use his night-vision goggles. These turned darkness into greenish twilight, and though they reduced his visual acuity from 20/20 down to about 20/40, that was still a major improvement on being totally blind in the dark. He kept the aircraft at three hundred feet, to avoid power lines, which scared the hell out of him, as they did all experienced helicopter pilots. There were no troops in the back, only Sergeant Nance, who still wore his pistol in order to feel more warriorlike—side arms were authorized for special-operations troops, even those who had little likelihood of ever using them. Malloy kept his Beretta M9 in his flight bag rather than a shoulder holster, which he found melodramatic, especially for a Marine.