Hard Target (19 page)

“I’m going to remain neutral on the merits of the NFA’s beliefs and intentions,” Uzi said. “I don’t want my personal views to affect our discussion one way or the other. But tell me more about the NFA’s leadership base. What motivates these people?”

Though Bishop was a good six inches shorter than Uzi, when the man looked up at him and their eyes met, even in the darkness Uzi could sense the fire that brewed there.

“What I hear you asking is how aggressive they’d get, right?” Uzi gave a slight nod, and Bishop continued. “These people want to win. They’re respected members of the community, every one of them. Their backgrounds are clean, at least as far as law enforcement is concerned. Some have ties to fringe groups but their association is unofficial, carefully protected.”

“But you know about them, these connections.”

“I know about them, but I don’t know the specifics. And don’t ask me how I know.”

Uzi glanced around the park, always on guard, always exercising caution. He lowered his voice. “I assume you had a defection from within their ranks.”

“You understand the situation well,” Bishop said.

“So you don’t know who these ‘fringe groups’ are.”

“No.” Bishop’s eyes narrowed. “And I’m better off not knowing.”

“I hear you,” Uzi said. “How about some perspective, then. How does all this tie in to President-elect Rusch?”

“It’s a miracle Rusch made it this far.”

“What do you mean by ‘made it’?”

“That he won the election. Rusch is a problem. When his sister was killed three years ago, he went through an epiphany. He suddenly realized what we’d been preaching for the past fifteen years. That guns kill.” Bishop wiped at his nose with a gloved hand. The temperature had dipped to the high thirties, and standing around was making it feel several degrees colder.

Bishop turned and started walking again, headed toward Independence Avenue. Uzi followed. “Rusch was a major challenge to the party. He was VP in a conservative administration that successfully defended against another 9/11. The economy was humming along and there was a steady growth in employment. They’d held the White House for eight years, but Whitehall was a goner on term limits. With his approval rating still in the seventies, they knew they had a strong shot at another four years—and Rusch was their ticket. But he had to be corralled. The main power brokers in the party sat him down and explained it all to him. They told him they needed him to be a team player or his career in politics would be over.”

“But Rusch came out against the gun lobby.”

“Big time. He played ball, rallied the party behind him. But the peace didn’t last long. He didn’t intend to make it a campaign issue, but a reporter with the
New York Times
asked the question during one of Rusch’s rallies in October. Remember?”

“Typical campaign chatter, that’s all that stuff ever is. I usually ignore it. Anyone can spin or promise anything to get elected—and the media plays right into it. Character is what counts.”

“The reporter asked Rusch where he stood on gun control. He couldn’t lie, because he knew the issue would come back to bite him in the ass later. So he danced around it. But during the last debate Gibson pressed him on it and Rusch officially came out against the gun lobby. At that point, a week before the election, there was nothing the party could do. He was their candidate.” Bishop sniffled, rubbed his hands together. “The media made a big thing of it, of course, but it was nothing compared to what went on behind the scenes.”

“And you know this, how?”

“Don’t ask me that. But if it makes you feel any better, my sources are solid. And I always verify what they tell me. The last thing I want is to start rumors or say anything I’d have to go back on later. It would destroy my credibility. And in this business, credibility is everything.”

“Go on,” Uzi said. They had crossed Independence and were headed toward the brilliantly lit Washington Monument.

“What no one knew is that the National Firearms Alliance got involved. They’d given three million dollars to the Republicans over the past several years, and that bought them a lot of influence. Like I said before, the NFA became a clandestine leader of the conservative right wing. They pushed Rusch to the edge but couldn’t get him to budge.

“Problem was, the NFA needed the right-wing as much as the right wing needed them. And in the end, both were powerless to stop Rusch. If he lost, the conservatives were out of power. If he won, they were scared shitless that he’d team with congressional Democrats to pass strict new gun laws. And with three Supreme Court judges about to retire or kick the bucket, you can bet Rusch’s appointees will see things the way he does. The long debate over interpretation of the Second Amendment would be settled. Rusch would see to that.”

Bishop let his theory hang in the thick air as his shoes crunched against the walkway.

Uzi felt his heartbeat kick up a notch, his body suffusing with euphoric anticipation. It was an emotion he hadn’t felt in several years—and even then, he’d only experienced it a handful of times—the sudden realization that he had stumbled onto something far larger than the original mission he’d been assigned. He tried to keep his voice even and restrained. “So you’re saying it’d be in their best interest if Glendon Rusch wasn’t in the picture.” He had chosen his words carefully, making it seem like a casual remark rather than a suggestion of motive for assassinating the man who had been elected the next president of the United States.

Bishop glanced sideways at Uzi. “They don’t pay me enough to draw such conclusions.”

They pay me enough
. Uzi shook Bishop’s hand, and then headed off into the darkness.

8:05 PM

137 hours 55 minutes remaining

Uzi went back to his office, too wired to go home. Forget about eating or sleeping. If there was validity to what Bishop had said, he knew the best place to be was at his desk, tapping away on his keyboard.

He exited the elevator, held his ID card in front of the sensor, and the electronic lock clunked loudly. After pushing through the thick glass doors, he made his way down the hall. A hint of movement by Hoshi’s cubicle brought him to her desk.

“I didn’t mean you should finish that report tonight,” Uzi said.

She looked up, her eyes glazed from concentration. “I had nothing better to do. Might as well work.”

“A beautiful woman like you has nothing to do? Impossible.”

The skin flushed beneath her high cheekbones. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You need something, don’t you.”

Though the sentiment behind his comment was genuine, he did, in fact, need her assistance. “You feel like going on a mission with me?”

She leaned back in her chair. “What kind of mission?”

He raised his eyebrows, then indicated that she should follow him. They walked over to his office and sat down beside his computer. “I met with your pal Bishop. He made some rather interesting assertions. I figured I’d dig a little, see what I could uncover. Other than the guys in cybercrime, you’re the only other person here who knows her way around a computer network.”

“What do you want me to do?”

Uzi pulled a laptop from behind his desk, taking care not to mess the papers that were arranged in their bins according to due date and level of complexity. He plugged it into an outlet and booted up. “You take the laptop and I’ll be on my terminal. Let’s see what we can find out.”

Hoshi’s eyes narrowed. “Find out about what?”

Uzi summarized Bishop’s information, then pointed to his laptop. “You take the executive leadership of the NFA and I’ll take our esteemed director. Let’s start there. See where it leads us.”

Hoshi swiveled her chair to face the screen and went to work.

TWO HOURS LATER, UZI ROSE from his seat and stretched toward the ceiling. “I’m hungry. You?”

Hoshi fought off a yawn. “I could use some coffee.” She looked at Uzi’s LCD monitor and inched closer. “What’s that?”

Uzi turned to find a blinking red cursor beside a short paragraph of text. “Hmm. Interesting.” He re-read the few sentences, then leaned back to consider what he’d seen. “I ran a little program I wrote last year. It takes a set of facts, like people’s names and other identifying info—SSNs, drivers license numbers, whatever you’ve got—and compares it to other people in a given database, using the parameters you set for the search.”

Hoshi squinted at him. “You wrote a program that could do all that?”

Uzi shrugged. “In my spare time.” He realized what that might say about his lack of a social life, but he was more interested in the information he had just discovered. “So I gave it certain names to compare. I wanted it to tell me if it found any crossover relationships. And here we go,” he said, pointing to the screen. “It found one between Douglas Knox and Skiles Rathbone, president of the NFA. They grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same high school and college, and graduated the same year.”

“Yeah, and that means what? Guilty by association? Guilty of what?”

Another blinking light grabbed Uzi’s attention before he could answer. He looked at the screen, read the information, and grabbed for his cell phone.

“Who are you calling?” Hoshi asked.

“A partner in crime.” He moved the handset to his mouth as the line connected. “Hey. We need to talk.”

Hector DeSantos hesitated. “Like some time tomorrow, or first thing in the morning—”

“Like now. It’s important. But not over the phone.”

DeSantos groaned. “Fine. Come by my place. But I’ve got company.” He gave Uzi directions and hung up.

“Get yourself a coffee, then keep on that,” he said, waving a finger at his laptop. “Play with my program some more, see what you find.”

“Looking for anything in particular?”

“Find me connections. Anything linking our two dead bodies, Rusch and Marine Two, the NFA, Knox, Coulter...and throw ARM into the mix for good measure.”

Hoshi bit her lip.

“Think of this as just any old investigation. Forget the names for a minute, who these people are. We have a responsibility to look into anyone and everyone. If you thought I was involved, I’d expect you to be pulling my sheets. Understand?”

“Whether or not I understand isn’t the issue. The director and attorney general—you think they’d understand if they found out what we were doing?”

Uzi looked away. “Call my cell if you find anything. Save everything into an encrypted file and email it to me. I’ll look at it later.”

Hoshi’s pleading eyes made Uzi feel guilty for a moment. But he knew he was doing the right thing—an investigation was an investigation, regardless of the players involved. When a trail was laid down, it was his responsibility to follow that trail, no matter where it might lead.

He kept telling himself that as he made his way to the parking garage.

10:33 PM

135 hours 27 minutes remaining

Uzi nosed his Tahoe up to the brick security booth at Hector DeSantos’s Beekman Place condominium in Adams Morgan. The immaculately groomed, trendy townhouse complex looked like an architect’s attempt to bring small-town neighborhood sensibilities to the nation’s capital. But its rural community flavor was primarily a function of aesthetics; Uzi surmised these units figured prominently on each homeowner’s statement of net worth.

Uzi gained access to the development from a pudgy guard wearing a faux tin badge pinned to a polyester white shirt frayed around the collar. After the black iron gate pivoted open, Uzi drove into the private street and parked in a guest slot beside a row of young oaks.

As he got out of the car, the tone of his Nokia bleated from his pocket. He answered it as he made his way down the brick sidewalk that ran the length of the attached townhouses.

“Hey, it’s your buddy—Danny Carlson.”

Uzi instantly dug the name from his memory. Danny Carlson was Nuri Peled’s cover. “Danny, my man, what’s the word?”

“I’m not finding anything. I’ve been digging—under beds and rocks, in drawers and closets, you know the deal. Turning up all sorts of stuff, but nothing that’d help you.”

Uzi stopped at the base of a small staircase and leaned against the wrought-iron railing. “I’m not surprised. It’s looking domestic.”

“What did I tell you?” Peled said.

“Yeah, well, at least we got a chance to see each other again. I’m sorry I lost touch. I kind of shut down. Just so I could go on. You know?”

“I do, my friend. And I’m sorry I let you lose touch. That was my mistake. Let’s not let that happen again. Agreed?”

A smile spread Uzi’s lips. “Yeah. Agreed.”

“It was good seeing you again, Uzi. Anything comes up, I’ll let you know.”

Uzi ended the call, then continued up the steps to DeSantos’s townhouse. Before he could knock, the front door opened and his partner invited him into the tiled entryway. A burst of laughter escaped from the adjacent kitchen area.

“Sorry to bust in on you so late. This could be important.”

DeSantos waved a hand and did his best to deflect Uzi’s concern. “What’s up?”

“Oh, you’re right!” A woman in tight jeans emerged from the kitchen with a glass of wine in her hand. “He
is
a stud.”

She moved into the entryway and eyed Uzi from a few feet away, her body angled perpendicular to his, her head following the path of her eyes: from his feet up to his face.

“This is Maggie,” DeSantos said. Uzi expected him to show a hint of embarrassment, but then remembered who he was dealing with, and the DeSantos’s “open” relationship.

Uzi extended a hand. “Glad to meet you, Maggie.”

She took his hand, squeezed it, and giggled. Her eyes widened slightly.

“And this is Trish and her daughter, Presley. My goddaughter,” DeSantos said, squaring his shoulders with pride. The toddler was draped atop her mother’s chest, arms dangling loosely over Trish’s shoulders.

Uzi nodded to them; the sight of the two-year-old girl, lying sleepily against her parent, triggered thoughts of Maya. He shuddered inside. “I’m... I’m really sorry to barge in like this.”

“Nonsense,” Trish said. “We were just getting ready to go. Pres was asleep on the couch, and I’ve gotta get her into bed before she wakes up for good.”