Dead on Arrival (29 page)

DeMarco did as he was told. He pulled the gun slowly from the holster and threw it away underhanded, and when he did the fat guy’s head turned momentarily as his eyes followed the arc of the gun – and just at that moment, DeMarco saw Danny’s arm move in his peripheral vision. Pugh’s man, unfortunately, saw Danny move as well. Without any hesitation, he swung the shotgun barrel toward Danny and pulled the trigger. The shotgun blast was horrendous in the quiet night, and Danny was blown backward by the slug striking his chest.

‘Jesus Christ!’ DeMarco screamed. His cousin was lying on his back, not moving. DeMarco didn’t see any blood, but with the night-vision goggles maybe blood wouldn’t be visible. ‘Goddammit, what in the hell did you shoot him for?’ he said.

‘He put his hand in his pocket. He was goin’ for his piece.’

‘He didn’t have a fuckin’ piece!’ DeMarco yelled.

‘Shut the hell up.’

DeMarco looked down at his cousin again. Like DeMarco, Danny had been wearing a bulletproof vest underneath his shirt but DeMarco didn’t know what a deer slug was, much less how much penetrating power one had. But it apparently had enough: Danny still hadn’t moved, and one leg was twisted under him in an unnatural position.

‘Now who the hell are you?’ the man said.

There was no point saying that he and Danny were a couple of guys who’d just gotten lost in the woods, not dressed the way they were. So DeMarco tried another tack.

‘We’re federal agents,’ he said. ‘You just killed a cop. The smartest thing you can do right now is put that shotgun down.’

‘The hell you say.’ He glanced down at Danny. ‘Take the goggles off that guy.’

DeMarco hesitated. Then he knelt and pulled the goggles off Danny’s head. Danny’s eyes were wide open, unblinking, and his head fell limply back to the ground after DeMarco removed the goggles.

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought,’ the man said. ‘That’s that New York wop that came to the house today. What were you two jack-offs doing, trying to rip Jubal off?’

‘I’m telling you we’re federal agents,’ DeMarco said. Pointing down at Danny he said, ‘He was undercover.’

‘Bullshit,’ the guy said. ‘Jubal checked him out good.’ Before DeMarco could say anything else, he said, ‘We’re gonna go on up to the big house and have a little talk. You, me, and Jubal.’ He motioned with his rifle. ‘Move.’

‘What about him?’ DeMarco said, gesturing at Danny. ‘Let me check to see if he has a pulse.’

The man laughed. ‘Believe me, slick, he don’t have no pulse. Now let’s go.’

DeMarco looked down at Danny one last time – Jesus, what would he tell Marie? – and started walking, the man falling into place behind him.

They hadn’t walked more than three paces when a shot rang out. DeMarco heard the man behind him grunt and the shotgun fired, the bullet or slug or whatever it was hitting the ground near DeMarco’s right foot. Then another shot was fired, not the shotgun, and DeMarco turned in time to see Pugh’s man fall to the ground.

Danny had shot the guy in the back. Twice.

DeMarco looked over at his cousin. He was sitting up now, holding a short-barreled automatic in his hand. Where the hell had Danny gotten a gun?

DeMarco kicked the shotgun out of the fallen man’s right hand, knelt down, and checked for a pulse in his throat. Pugh’s man groaned. Good. He was still alive.

Danny was now standing next to DeMarco, looking down at the wounded man and at the same time rubbing his chest where the slug had hit his vest.

‘Do you know him?’ DeMarco asked.

‘Yeah,’ Danny said, ‘it’s that Harlan guy who went to the lab with me and Randy.’

He started to ask Danny where he’d gotten the gun when Danny said, ‘Oh-oh!’

‘What?’ DeMarco said, and Danny pointed. There were headlights coming toward them, probably ATVs, and they were coming from the direction of Pugh’s house. The pistol shots Danny had fired hadn’t been that loud, just a couple of pops, but the two shotgun blasts could have been heard back at the house. DeMarco hoped Patsy Hall had heard them as well, but they were closer to Pugh’s house than they were to Patsy.

‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ DeMarco said. He tossed Danny his night-vision goggles. Danny put them on, and he and DeMarco started running.

As they were running, DeMarco couldn’t help but think of the time that he and Danny, both thirteen, went into a mom-and-pop store in Queens and stole two bottles of beer. Danny had been his best friend back then. The Italian who ran the store, probably a guy as old as DeMarco was now, took off after them. The store owner didn’t stand a chance. DeMarco and his cousin, they just flew down the side-walk that day – and right now DeMarco was wishing he still had that kind of speed.

The second thought he had was:
Now I owe the son
of a bitch for my life
.

DeMarco and Danny reached the point in the barbed-wire fence where they’d entered Pugh’s property, both of them panting from the run through the woods. DeMarco looked behind him; he didn’t see headlights. Maybe Pugh’s men had stopped to deal with the injured man, or maybe they were checking on the lab. When DeMarco had enough breath to talk he said to Hall, ‘We found it. We’ve got the pictures.’

‘Do you have the GPS coordinates for the lab?’ she asked Danny.

‘Oh,
shit
!’ DeMarco said. He hadn’t even thought about that.

‘Yeah,’ Danny said. ‘I hit the waypoint as soon as we found the fake-plant door thing.’

‘The fake-plant door thing?’ Hall said, ‘What are you—’

DeMarco explained, concluding with, ‘You’ll understand when you see it.’

Danny handed Hall the GPS and said, ‘The lab’s the fifth waypoint.’

‘Good,’ Hall said, her eyes shining. ‘Goddamn good,’ she said again. ‘Give me the camera. I gotta get a warrant right away.’

DeMarco said, ‘There’s something else you need to—’

‘Not now,’ Hall said, and turned away.

‘Danny shot a guy,’ DeMarco said to Hall’s back. ‘One of Pugh’s men.’

‘What?’ Hall said.

DeMarco started to explain but Hall interrupted him.

‘We’ll worry about this guy you shot later. Right now I need a warrant.’

She walked over to her SUV, opened the rear hatch, and took out a laptop. She placed the laptop on the hood of the car and said, ‘Come on, come on,’ while the computer was starting up. Holding a penlight in her mouth, she connected the camera to the laptop and then started typing. DeMarco guessed she was e-mailing the pictures to somebody and then listened as she started talking into her phone.

‘This is Hall. I just sent you photos of Pugh’s lab and the coordinates where it’s located. Go get me a warrant. Show the judge the photos and tell him I have two witnesses, and that one of the witnesses took the photos and was in the lab. Tell him the witnesses can
definitely
put the lab on Pugh’s property. And if the judge gives you any shit, any shit at all, wake up Gail Bradley back in D.C.

‘While you’re getting the warrant, I want Jorgenson and three other men in the chopper and I want the chopper over that lab as fast as it can get there. Tell Jorgenson to shine lights down onto the lab but don’t land until I give the word. If Pugh’s guys fire at him, he’s to return fire. Tell him to blast their asses away. I want the rest of the team to meet me at Jubal’s front gate. The team with me will round up Jubal and whoever’s with him in his house. Get moving.’

Jesus, DeMarco thought, she sounded like George Patton.

Hall closed her cell phone and said triumphantly to herself, ‘I’ve
got
the son of a bitch.’

When Hall walked off to talk to the DEA agent that had accompanied her, DeMarco said to Danny, ‘Where the hell did the gun come from?’

‘I brought it with me from New York. I dis assembled it and packed it in my luggage. I thought I might need one down here, considering what we were doing.’

Goddamn airline security was useless, DeMarco thought. ‘Then why in the hell did you ask Hall for one?’ he said.

‘Would have looked funny if I hadn’t,’ Danny said.

‘The DEA’s arrested Pugh,’ DeMarco said.

‘Yeah, but is that—’ Mahoney said.

‘And we got something else,’ he said. He told Mahoney how Anisa Aziz had admitted to Emma that she’d been kidnapped before her uncle tried to blow up the Capitol. ‘The girl said that one of the guys who kidnapped her had some tattoos on his knuckles, and one of the yahoos they caught at Pugh’s place has the tattoos. The problem is, the girl never saw the guy’s face.’

‘So can you tie Pugh to the damn terrorist attacks or not?’ Mahoney said.

‘Probably not,’ DeMarco said. ‘I mean, not based on any evidence that the DEA has found so far. Hall’s guys—’

‘Who’s Hall?’ Mahoney said.

‘The DEA agent in charge down here, the one who arrested Pugh. Anyway, Hall’s guys will search Pugh’s place and if they find anything that ties him to the attacks they’ll let me know, but I wouldn’t count on it. This guy Pugh, he owns four hundred acres, and it’s gonna take a long time to search the place.’

‘Goddammit!’ Mahoney yelled. ‘I don’t have time for that. You gotta make Pugh admit he was involved.’

‘I know,’ DeMarco said. ‘And this is what I’ll have to do. …’

When he finished telling Mahoney what he planned, he said, ‘Hall’s gonna go nuts. She might even go to the press.’

‘I’ll take care of her,’ Mahoney said.

‘She’s good people, boss.’

‘Yeah, well, sometimes good people get screwed too,’ Mahoney said.

DeMarco waited impatiently for Patsy Hall to get off the phone. As he was waiting, Danny walked over to him and said, ‘I just finished giving a statement to the DEA guys and a lawyer. They videotaped it. They said they won’t need me again until they start prepping for the trial. Any reason I can’t go back to New York?’

‘You better check with Hall,’ DeMarco said, motioning toward the office where Hall was sitting, ‘but as far as I’m concerned you can leave. But you better understand something, Danny. You’re not done with this thing until those guys are in jail. You got it?’

‘Yeah, but I’m okay with the Queens D. A. Right?’

‘Yeah. You can go back to fencing for Tony Benedetto until they catch you for doing it.’

Danny shook his head. ‘Look, man,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t like me and Marie planned to fall in love. It just happened. One of these days, maybe you’ll find it in yourself to forgive us both.’

DeMarco stared at his cousin for a minute.

‘Go fuck yourself,’ he said and walked away.

‘I need to talk to Pugh alone,’ DeMarco told Patsy Hall.

‘Sorry,’ she said, shaking her head sadly, as if she meant it. ‘But I can’t allow that. Anytime anybody talks to Pugh, I want his lawyer and our lawyer in the room.’

One of Hall’s agents stuck his head into her office at that moment. ‘Patsy, Dick Garner’s on the phone. Line four. He wants to talk to you.’

Richard Garner was the top man at the DEA, and Hall was several rungs on the ladder below him. She had heard Garner speak a couple of times when he gave one of his sappy pep talks to motivate the troops, but she had never spoken to him.

‘I didn’t know catching Jubal Pugh was
that
big a deal,’ the agent said.

Patsy Hall punched a button and picked up the phone on her desk. ‘Mr Garner, this is Agent Hall.’

All DeMarco heard was Hall’s side of the conversation, which consisted mostly of
yes, sir
.

At one point, while she was listening, she looked over at DeMarco.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said again. ‘May I ask why? …

‘Yes, sir,’ Hall said one more time before hanging up.

Looking at DeMarco she said, ‘Mr Garner says I’m supposed to let you do anything you want. You wanna tell me what’s going on here?’

‘Sorry, Patsy, I can’t,’ DeMarco said. ‘At least not yet.’

Hall stared at him. ‘You screw up my case against Pugh, and I’m gonna get a nightstick and beat you to death. I swear to Christ I will.’

Pugh was dressed in an orange jumpsuit. At DeMarco’s request – at this point, all DeMarco’s requests were being granted – the manacles were taken off Pugh’s hands. They were seated in an office, not an interrogation room. DeMarco was seated behind the desk of whoever normally occupied the office; Pugh was in a chair in front of the desk. A DEA agent was posted outside the door, and the door was closed.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Pugh said. ‘And why wasn’t my lawyer allowed to be here?’

DeMarco didn’t say anything for a moment. He just stared at Pugh’s unshaven face. With his pointed nose and weak chin, Pugh reminded DeMarco of a badger or a wolverine – one of those critters that makes up for its lack of bulk with pure viciousness.

‘I’m the guy who set you up, Jubal,’ DeMarco said. ‘I’m the guy that got Danny DeMarco and Tony Benedetto to cooperate with the DEA. And I’m the guy who’ll make Danny DeMarco testify against you.’

Pugh didn’t say anything.

‘You’re going to be convicted for manufacturing meth, and the judge is going to give you the maximum sentence permitted by the sentencing guidelines. He’s going to do this because he’ll be pressured by some people in Washington. Those same people in Washington are also going to promise to make him a federal judge with a lifetime appointment if he does what they want. So it doesn’t matter if you’ve got the ghost of Johnnie-fuckin’-Cochran for a lawyer, Jubal, you’re going to jail.’

Pugh blinked once.

‘You’re fifty-eight years old right now,’ DeMarco said. ‘If you’re not killed in prison, you’ll be seventy-eight or eighty years old when you get out. By then you’ll most likely have prostate cancer or colon cancer or whatever diseases afflict old men. You’ll be on death’s doorstep when you get out of prison.’

Pugh blinked again.

‘Now look around you,’ DeMarco said. ‘You’re not in an interrogation room. There’s no one-way mirror, no video camera in the ceiling, no tape recorder. It’s just you and me.’

‘Maybe you’re wired,’ Jubal said.

DeMarco shook his head. ‘I don’t want what I’m going to tell you recorded.’ He paused. ‘If you can give me what I want, I can keep you out of prison. Your property’s going to be auctioned off and your bank accounts are going to be frozen and all the money you have will be placed in the U.S. Treasury. But
you
get to stay out of jail –
if
you can deliver.’

‘So what is it? What do you want?’

‘I
know
,’ DeMarco said, though he really didn’t, ‘that your people forced three American Muslims to commit acts of terrorism. I know your guys – Donny Cray and that asshole Randy with the prison tats on his knuckles – killed Reza Zarif’s family, his wife and his two kids, and made him fly that plane at the White House. I know your people abducted Mustafa Ahmed’s niece to force him to blow up the Capitol. Mustafa’s niece
saw
the tats on Randy’s hands. And I know your guys also killed the Capitol police officer who shot Mustafa, to make sure he wouldn’t talk.’

‘That’s all bullshit.’

‘No, it’s not all bullshit, but if it is … well, then too bad for you, Jubal. You go to jail for twenty years. You see, you’re a malignant piece of shit but right now you’re a small problem. Because of what you’ve done, Muslims in this country are being persecuted and a very bad law is about to be passed. So right now, getting you to admit that al-Qaeda wasn’t behind these attacks is more important than putting your ass in the slam.’

Pugh tried to keep his face immobile but his lips twitched. Like a badger in a cage, he’d just seen a way out.

‘And we’re pretty sure you didn’t personally kill anybody,’ DeMarco said, ‘which is the reason you’re getting a break, but you have to testify against the people who did.’

DeMarco didn’t really know that Pugh hadn’t killed anyone, but he was guessing that Pugh wouldn’t have taken the risk. And even if he
had
killed someone – even if Jubal Pugh had pulled the trigger that had killed Reza Zarif’s kids – DeMarco was telling Pugh that he could blame their deaths on the people who worked for him.

‘Somebody has to swing for these crimes,’ DeMarco continued. ‘So you have to give the FBI enough information to convict your pals, Jubal. If you can’t do that, no deal.’

‘Is that it?’ Pugh said.

‘No. You also have to give the Bureau the guy who hired you. We know there’s a middleman, an organizer, a guy who’s been giving you directions. And we know someone very rich hired the middleman. We want those two people, Jubal. If you can’t deliver the middleman you’re of no use to us. As bad as you are, we really want the people behind these crimes.

‘And keep something else in mind,’ DeMarco said, before Pugh could interrupt. ‘Why do you think this middleman came to you? He didn’t pick you because he thought you were some sort of genius. He came to you because you’re the perfect patsy. You’re the head of a hate group, at least that’s what your Web site says, and this guy chose you because if by some chance we figured out that these Muslims were being coerced, and if we traced it back to somebody, that somebody would be you. And Jubal – going to jail for manufacturing meth is one thing. But if you don’t cooperate and we can prove you were an accomplice to murdering two kids, you’ll get the death penalty.’

Pugh sat there, saying nothing, studying DeMarco’s face.

‘I want this in writing,’ Pugh said at last. ‘And I want the document looked at by my lawyer, so if I do what you want, you won’t be able to screw me later.’

DeMarco nodded. ‘We can do that. But I need to know, right now, the name of the guy who hired you.’

‘I don’t know his name. I only met him once. I tried to have him followed, but he lost my guy.’

‘Bullshit,’ DeMarco said.

‘I’m telling you the truth,’ Pugh said.

DeMarco rose from his chair. ‘Then I guess it’s adios, Jubal. You’re no fuckin’ good to us.’

‘But I got a picture of him,’ Pugh said. ‘And a computer on my farm loaded with his e-mails.’

DeMarco sat back down. ‘Give me some details.’

* * *

DeMarco ignored Patsy Hall as he left the DEA building. He ignored her pleas, and later her threats, to tell her what was going on. He walked a block, then stopped and sat down at a bus stop. For a couple of minutes he didn’t do anything; he just sat there trying to collect his thoughts, then he pulled out his cell phone and made a call. He talked to Mahoney for approximately ten minutes.