Omega Blue Read online

  “Emmett’s specialty was computers. Maggie could probably see you guys through in a pinch, but you need somebody who knows how to hack their way around systems.”

  “Who were you thinking of?”

  “Garry Drennan.”

  “He’s been in VICAP too long. He’s almost a burnout. He has a good feel for serial killers, but he lacks the ability to change stride in midstream anymore. Our investigations don’t hold up to set patterns.”

  “Grace Parana.”

  “No. She’s good at the file-and-sort stuff. I’ve seen some of her work. But she can’t move in the hacking circles. Those people are almost from another planet. Emmett understood them, and he understood the free thinking behind computer work.”

  “Henry Spradlin specializes in creative thinking with computers.”

  “And with his fists. The guy may know how to out finesse a cybernetic system, but he doesn’t know anything about conducting himself around other people.”

  In the other room, Mac’s voice soothingly hammered home every charge that would be brought against the jackal network, patiently took away every chance Wiar might have thought he had at escape.

  “Keith Bentz is the last qualified person I have for possible promotion.”

  Wilson studied the jackal’s posture through the glass and knew the guy was beginning to crumble. “Bentz is too married for Omega Blue.”

  “You thought Maggie was too.”

  “I was wrong. I didn’t see that she believed in the program as much as I did. Still, it hurt her when Johnny was killed last year. She went through a lot of guilt for not being there more. She’s still going through some of it.”

  “Maybe you’re wrong about Bentz.”

  “No. The guy wants to start a family. It isn’t fair for him to have to choose between that and his career.”

  “Are we talking about Keith Bentz here, or Slade Wilson?”

  “Back off, Earl.”

  “Sorry. I was out of line. Maybe we should wait and discuss this another time.”

  Ignoring the memory of past hurt that had suddenly swirled up around him, Wilson said, “No. The team needs that slot filled. Wherever this thing goes, we’re going to need someone skilled in computers. These people don’t do cash-and-carry with the big deals.”

  “Then you’re going to have to pick one of those four.”

  “No. You’re leaving someone out.”

  “Who?”

  “Quinn Valentine.”

  Vache hesitated before replying.

  In the interrogation room, Wiar was hiding his face in his hands and struggling to maintain self-control. Mac was relentless, still talking in a soft voice.

  “Valentine has a chip on his shoulder,” Vache said.

  “You know that as much as I do. You know his background. He’s young and green and feels like he has to prove himself to the whole world.”

  “Not the whole world,” Wilson said. “Just the House subcommittee.”

  “Slade, in maybe three or four years, Valentine will make a great field agent. He might even qualify for your team. But not now.”

  “I can’t wait three or four years. I need the guy now. We can work with him, fast track his training. I’ve seen him. I’ve had my eye on him since he joined the Academy eight months ago. He’s got a fire this team needs. Those other people don’t.”

  “Maybe you need time to think about this.”

  “I don’t have time. Can you get Valentine for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then do it. We should be in Quantico by morning. Fix it so he’s there when we arrive.”

  “Okay.” Vache was clearly unhappy.

  Wilson could sympathize with the man, but they were looking at the job from two different perspectives. Vache knew it, too.

  “I want something from you in exchange,” Vache said.

  “What?”

  “The House subcommittee meets the day after tomorrow. I want you there with me when they review the program.”

  “Politics aren’t my game.”

  “I’ll give you pointers.”

  “Why do you want me there?”

  “Not as punishment,” Vache replied. “I just want you to get a good look at how thin the ice is that you’re skating on.”

  “We’ve been on thin ice since this unit was formed,” Wilson said.

  “It’s gotten thinner.”

  “Name the time. I’ll be there.”

  “Fair enough. Valentine will be waiting on us at Quantico. Let me make a couple calls.” Vache left the window and crossed the room to the phone.

  Inside the interrogation room, Mac tapped a cigarette against the back of his palm, then lit it. A blue haze swirled slowly around the room. “Do you understand everything I’ve explained to you, Jimmy?”

  Wiar nodded. Tears, angry and unshed, gleamed in his eyes. “It’s not fair. I didn’t even know what was in that truck. I was just hired to unload it, that’s all.”

  “I believe you,” Mac said.

  Wilson knew Mac didn’t. He was too seasoned to think for a moment that the young man was an innocent. Wiar had just never been down for anything this serious before, and he’d never been in a position to deal himself out of it. That part had to be looking pretty good to Wiar now.

  “The problem is,” Mac continued, “the district attorney’s office isn’t going to believe you. And a jury probably won’t either. If I was you, I’d think about copping a lesser plea if it was offered. Maybe you can cut a few years off your sentence.”

  “Oh, man,” Wiar groaned.

  “Sorry, kid.”

  Lee Rawley moved into fluid motion at once. A predatory smile gleamed below the mirror shades as he closed in on Wiar. “Well, I’m not sorry for the sniveling little waste of oxygen. A cop was killed tonight. A good cop. He was a friend of mine. Did you know that? Or do you even care?”

  Wiar turned away from Rawley.

  Dropping into a crouch beside Wiar, Rawley reached out and seized the jackal’s face in his hand. He yanked on it roughly until Wiar was facing him. “Look at me, you snot-nosed little punk.”

  Wiar’s eyes widened in fright, and he had to force his hands back into his lap to keep from grabbing Rawley’s arm.

  A crooked-toothed grin filled Rawley’s lower face.

  He maintained his hold on Wiar. “You’ve never been to a federal lockup, have you? Only done county time. Things are a lot different in a federal prison. Bet you’re still a virgin, aren’t you?”

  “I’ve had women,” Wiar said with more spunk than Wilson would have thought possible.

  Rawley released Wiar’s face, still smiling. He rubbed the back of his fingers along the jackal’s cheek in a familiar caress. “That’s not what I’m talking about. Have you ever been a woman for a man? Have you ever gotten down on your knees in front of a guy who’s on death row? You’ll do what he tells you to, and be glad you’re still alive when he lets you go.”

  Wiar turned his head away. “Ain’t no man gonna make me do something like that and live.”

  Rawley’s hard laugh filled the room. “Boy, that kind of attitude is going to make you even more in demand. You get inside, they’re going to love breaking your spirit. Pretty soon you’ll get so you’ll drop to your knees for a cigarette or a library pass. And they won’t stop there, either. They’ll take your cherry, too. It won’t be like your first time with a girl. You won’t think you’re in love, and it won’t be in the back of some car or a borrowed apartment or motel room. And you won’t be alone. First-timers, they usually get a train pulled on them. You know what a train is?”

  “Make him leave me alone!” Wiar yelled at Mac. “He can’t talk to me like that!”

  “The hell I can’t,” Rawley said. “You get to prison, you’re going to get this same speech from the warden. Have to get you acclimated to your new environment as soon as possible so they don’t find you dead some morning because you didn’t know your place.”

  “I want o
ut of here,” Wiar said. “I want a lawyer. Before I talk to you guys any more, I want a lawyer present. I know my rights.” The whites of his eyes showed; beads of perspiration trickled down his face.

  “A train,” Rawley repeated.”That means five, maybe six big guys who haven’t seen a woman in months or years are going to take first crack at you before the rest of the inmates move in on you. When they finish with you, you won’t be able to walk for days. If you’re too shy to report to the infirmary, you could get an infection or gangrene, maybe die of the injuries. And pray that one of them isn’t carrying AIDs. If they are, you’re screwed for the rest of the short life you’ve got to enjoy.”

  “Nobody’s going to do that!” Wiar shut his eyes as if that could make Rawley’s words go away.

  “If you’re lucky, somebody will want you for a wife. As good looking as you are, I can see that happening. Might even have a cushy life for a while after that. Of course, you’re going to have to work hard to make sure your man doesn’t lose interest in you.”

  Tears slid down Wiar’s face now. He stared desperately at Mac. “You got to do something.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can’t let them do that to me.”

  “Kid, I’m sorry.”

  Rawley stood up. “Ain’t no thing, kid, I got a few hours to kill. Maybe I’ll find a nice, quiet out-of-the-way cell and turn you out all by myself. Until somebody makes bond for you, you’re the property of the FBI.”

  “God, that’s one cold man,” Vache said.

  “I know,” Wilson said, crossing the room to the phone. “He can be persuasive in an interrogation room.” He dialed and heard the phone ring in the other room.

  Mac picked it up and said hello.

  “You got him,” Wilson said. “Bring him in.” He broke the connection and hung up.

  Mac pretended to listen for a while longer, then cradled the receiver. Rawley continued to taunt Wiar, breaking him even further.

  Wilson didn’t like interrogations done this way, but at times there was no other way to get the job done. He watched Wiar carefully. It was important to get a feel for the answers the man would offer. If Wiar was scared enough, he’d make up anything the FBI team wanted to hear. They needed the truth.

  “Look,” Mac said as he sat back on the table and flicked the ashes off a fresh cigarette, “I got permission to make a deal, but only if you can provide something we want. A couple of the other guys talked first, but if you can add something to what we already know, we might be able to get your sentence reduced to probation.”

  “Sure,” Wiar said, brushing the tears from his eyes with his forearm. “What do you want to know?”

  Mac took Wiar through the whole run, beginning with Wiar’s employment at the Miami end. Nothing special came up, and it was pretty much as the team had put it together. Then Mac went for the payoff while pretending to be finishing up his notes on a legal pad. “Who was running the jackal network?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Wiar said. “The guys over us weren’t supposed to talk about it. I guess they figured the less we knew, the less we could hurt them if things went wrong… .”

  Wilson curled his hand into a fist against the glass. “C’mon, kid. You had to have heard somebody’s name.”

  “… Kramer, one of the drivers, he’d been around the jackal network for a while. He mentioned a guy’s name once when we went out for a few drinks. Kramer talked a lot after a couple six-packs.”

  “Who?”

  “Prio. Harry Prio. Kramer called him Balls, but said that nobody called Prio that to his face and lived. There was supposed to be somebody over Prio, but Prio was the cut-out man ramrodding the operation.”

  “Bingo,” Wilson said. He glanced at Vache. “Harry Prio belongs to Sebastian DiVarco. Boston Mafia.”

  “I’ve heard the name,” Vache said. “Giuseppe DiVarco used to a big mover in Boston’s North End back in the 1980s. But what is DiVarco doing this far down the coast? The Boston families have been pretty much cut up these days and haven’t owned a thing outside of the state.”

  “Something’s changed,” Wilsons said. “That’s just one of the things we have to find out now.”

  Mac and Rawley finished up with Wiar in the other room and guided him toward the door as the phone began to ring behind Wilson. He picked it up. Maggie Scuderi identified herself and gave a quick rundown of the events that had just unfolded outside the bar. Wilson unfolded a city map of Atlanta and marked the addresses she gave him.

  “Move in on Aikman’s residence,” Wilson said. “That’s closer to your present twenty. We’ll cover his business and see about getting a court order to let us go inside. Call me when you get there.”

  “Right,” Scuderi said, and hung up.

  “We got another break,” Wilson said as he headed for the door. “Maggie may have turned up the bank on the jackal network. You want to come along or wait here?”

  “We’ll take my car,” Vache said.

  5

  “We aren’t alone,” Lee Rawley said. His voice carried in a whisper over the T-jack.

  Slade Wilson didn’t slacken his pace when he received the transmission. He maneuvered in the shadows around the Gresham office building in an older part of the downtown sector along Virginia Avenue NE. The Delta Elite rode in a shoulder holster under his right arm. He kept the motorcycle jacket zipped at the waist, so he could quickly seal the Kevlar body armor once he’d freed his weapon.

  “How many do you have?”

  Rawley was on top of a three-story building across the street with a Barrett M-82 Light Fifty sniper rifle with thermal-imaging sights. “I’ve got four outside. At least three inside confirmed visually. And there’s another guy I haven’t got figured out yet. He’s being marched between two of the perps and doesn’t look happy about it at all.”

  Wilson turned the corner and went into the alley. Taking a pair of night goggles from his pocket, he slipped them on and activated the chipped circuitry. The shadows and the night went away, and the alley looked as hard and as bright as a moonscape. A skeletal fire-escape ladder wormed its way up the side of the building, reaching the top five stories. “Maggie,” Wilson spoke into the T-jack’s mike.

  “I’m with you,” Scuderi replied. She and January were en route from Aikman’s home. The accountant hadn’t been there, and his wife didn’t know when he’d left. She did remember that he had received a phone call, but she had an early morning shift at the railway and hadn’t gotten up to ask him about it. “What does the guy look like?”

  “Anemic. Five ten. Maybe one sixty. Glasses. Thirty, thirty-five. Brown hair in a conservative cut, and a mustache.”

  “That could be Aikman,” Scuderi said.

  Wilson trotted to the fire escape and gazed up at the brick surface of the wall. None of the windows above were lighted. He listened, but could only hear the static hum made by the building’s life-support systems.

  “Where’s this guy’s office?” Earl Vache whispered.

  He stood beside Wilson, moving more quietly than a man of his size had any right to. The T-jack looked like a hard, metal scar along his jawline.

  “Fifth floor,” Wilson replied as he estimated the distance to the second-story platform. “Can you make that fire escape?”

  “Without pulling the ladder down?”

  “Yeah. That would make too much noise.”

  “No. In my best days I couldn’t have made a leap like that.”

  “How about if I give you a boost up?”

  “Maybe.”

  Wilson knelt and laced his fingers together to make a stirrup. “Let’s give it a shot.”

  Warily, Vache stepped into Wilson’s hands and said, “Ready.”

  “Go.” Wilson leaned into the effort as Vache jumped upward.

  Omega Blue’s liaison grabbed the lower edge of the platform, then began the laborious task of pulling himself up the side.

  Stepping back a few paces, Wilson took three big stri
des and went airborne. His hand cleared the lip of the platform by almost a foot. He tugged and quickly hauled himself up. As he threw himself over the railing and came to a standing position, the 10mm came away in his fist and he zipped the jacket. Inside the second-story window nothing moved. He glanced at the living room furniture, blank television, and the chip player with 3:49 glaring in red numbers.

  Wilson went up, keeping his feet to the outside edges of the metal steps. “Stay out of the middle. You’ll make less noise.”

  “Give me a break here,” Vache said. “I was a field agent a lot of years before they gave me the desk.” But he kept his feet away from the center of the steps.

  Wilson kept his back toward the building as he made his way up to the third-story landing. The 10mm felt hard and reassuring in his fist. The rain had stopped now, but the air still felt doughy and oppressive. Pools of collected rainwater dotted the pavement of the alley below and looked like black ice-skating rinks. He gazed into every window he passed. There was no movement inside. He blew into the T-jack’s mike and accessed the frequency. “Rawley.”

  “Go.”

  “Can you track them?”

  “It’s a little uncertain with the thermal imaging, but I’m getting readings on the fourth floor. Looks like the total inside has been bumped up to six.”

  “Stand by.”

  “You call it,” Rawley replied, “I’ll be there.”

  Wilson was counting on that. Aikman’s office was on the side of the building facing Rawley. Even if the perps weren’t visible through the windows, the thermal-imaging scope on the Barrett would allow Rawley to pick them up. The big 50-cal rounds could punch through the old brick and mortar if necessary.

  “Slade.”

  “Go,” Wilson said as he made the fourth-floor landing. Vache had fallen a half-dozen steps behind him.

  “I found three cars in the parking area behind the building,” Mac said. “All of their engines are hot, so I know they were just parked.” He read off the license plate numbers.

  Scuderi broke in. “The first car belongs to Aikman. His wife confirmed that it was missing from the garage.”

  “Fifth floor,” Rawley called out, “and moving toward the northeast corner of the building.”