Hard Target (3 page)

Uzi’s glance followed hers and settled on a long-haired brunet in a business suit, walking slowly along the periphery. “Who’s that?” He wasn’t sure if he had said it aloud.

“Haven’t the slightest. Not one of ours.”

Uzi watched the woman take a few more steps, then turned back to Bonacelli. “Thanks. I’ll catch you a little later, in case there’s anything else you can tell me.” Without waiting for a response, he made his way toward the brunet. Her skirt ended halfway down her thighs, curiously short for a November evening in Virginia. Then again, she might’ve been dressed for a night out, then ordered to report to the accident scene. Whatever the reason, Uzi wasn’t complaining.

But as quickly as the hormones shot into his bloodstream, the guilt followed, like a radioactive tag searching out its target tissue. How could he lust after another woman?

He and Dena had been together since high school, from the moment he had first laid eyes on her cute ass. She always laughed when he told her that his first attraction to her involved her backside. In her mind, she had more intriguing features. But as Uzi had told her, you can never explain attraction. It’s either there or it’s not. And with Dena, it started with something physical—her behind—and quickly progressed to the most intangible of assets, her heart and soul.

As the brunet slinked toward him, the thought that he was no longer married flashed in his mind. He was widowed. It was an important distinction, he told himself, though it was one he had not been able to settle deep within his core. Rational thoughts and logic almost always got lost inside the emotional baggage of guilt.

As an internal war raged between his hormones and conscience, he found himself blocking the woman’s path. Without meeting his eyes, she shifted her hips and deftly slithered around him.

“Have we met before?” He usually knew he was going to speak before words emerged from his mouth. In this case, something else had control over his body.

The woman turned slowly and looked at him, her lustrous hair falling across the left portion of her face. He could only make out the white of her right eye, as it reflected the burning embers along the ground.

“I’m sorry,” he said, stepping toward her. “Aaron Uziel.” He had used his full last name. Why? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that. He suddenly felt hot, a layer of sweat blanketing his skin. He stood there facing her before awkwardly extending a hand.

She took it in a firm handshake, then released it. “FBI?”

His left hand found the FBI creds ID clipped to his coat. “Yeah, I’m here for the wreck. To investigate.”
What the hell’s wrong with me? Of course I’m here to investigate.

“Well, good luck,” she said.

Before he could object, or say something to prevent her from walking away, she turned and moved off in the opposite direction. Her hips seemed to gyrate rhythmically.

He shook his head, and an image of his beloved Dena popped into his mind.

“Hey, G-man.”

Uzi turned and had to hold up a hand against the blisteringly bright klieg light illuminating the area. Standing there was Special Agent Karen Vail, a profiler with the Bureau’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.

“Karen, what are you doing here?”

“My ASAC said to get my ass over here ASAP. So I got my ass over here. Luckily the rest of me decided to come along for the ride.”

“I thought you’re in the adult crimes unit.”

“So you
were
paying attention.” She play-punched his shoulder. “I know some politicians behave like children, but last I checked, this
is
an adult crime.”

Uzi grinned at her. “I’ve missed working with you, Karen.”

“Actually, this should’ve been Art Rooney’s case, but Rooney just went on medical leave. They assigned it to my partner, Frank Del Monaco. But he’s caught up in traffic on the way back from New York. So you got me.”

“Don’t know Del Monaco.”

“Let’s just say you lucked out.”

Uzi held up a hand. “Hey, any time I get a chance to work with you, I’ve got the four-leaf clover thing going.”

“You’re not Irish, Uzi.”

Uzi jutted his chin back. “Are you holding that against me?”

“We all have our handicaps.”

A man wearing an NTSB jacket brushed against Uzi’s shoulder. “All right,” Uzi said, “you know the drill. Put on those mind-reading sixth sense glasses, take a good look around, then tell me who did this.”

“Mind if I click my heels three times first?”

Uzi puckered his lips and nodded. “So that’s how you profilers do it.”

“Hey, boychick!”

Uzi turned and saw a silhouetted figure moving toward him.

There was only one person who ever called him “boychick,” a Yiddish term that meant “male buddy.” A few more steps and his vision confirmed the approaching man to be Hector DeSantos, a Department of Defense covert operative. Tall and lean, with the coolest pair of tiny, rectangular-framed designer glasses Uzi had ever seen, DeSantos sauntered with the confidence of a battlefield soldier armed with an AK-47 and a belt full of ammo.

“Santa, my man. Long time.” The two men bumped fists.

“I heard somewhere you were with the Bureau. How’ve you been?”

Uzi bobbed his head. “Been better. You?”

“Same here. It’s been, what? Four, five years?”

“A little over six. Not that I’m counting.”

DeSantos leaned around Uzi. “Is that—Karen?”

“I was wondering how long it was going to take you to notice me,” Vail said.

“Hey,” DeSantos said, holding up a hand. “I never have a problem noticing a beautiful woman. This oaf was blocking my view.”

Uzi jutted his chin back. “Oaf?”

“Great to see you,” DeSantos said as he gave Vail a hug.

Uzi dug both hands into his jeans pockets. “I’d never figure you two for friends. You’re at, like, different ends of the personality spectrum. If there is such a thing.”

“We worked a case together,” Vail said.

“A pretty intense case,” DeSantos said with a chuckle. “I gotta warn you, Uzi, she’s a goddamn pistol.”

Uzi tilted his head in appraisal. “I’ve always thought of her more as a shotgun.”

DeSantos nodded. “Deadly at close range.”

“Exactly.”

Vail rolled her eyes. “Don’t know about you two, but I’ve got work to do.”

“Catch up with you later,” Uzi said.

“Is that a promise?” She winked, then walked off.

“So.” DeSantos waved a hand at the burning wreckage. “This your case?”

“Lucky me. What about you? You don’t handle shit like this. Don’t you still work in the basement, doing things nobody’s supposed to know about?”

“I’m kind of on leave from the secret spy stuff. Better left for another time.”

“Consider it left. So whaddya got on this crash? You always know where to bite to get through the gristle.”

DeSantos chuckled. “Here’s the scoop: Air Traffic Control received a communication from Marine Two at twenty-three hundred-oh-one. They thought something hit their tail rotor. About the same time Marine Three reported a bright flash from Two’s aft, and then they thought something hit
them
. ATC had the two birds maintaining formation, so it’s pretty clear they didn’t hit each other. ATC was thinking maybe it was a piece of Two’s tail rotor that hit Three. They instructed Two to head for Quantico. Few seconds later, Three lost contact with ATC. Last communication at twenty-three oh-two, Two reported a second jolt and a complete loss of control.”

Uzi mulled this a moment. “Maybe we can get something more from Rusch and that Secret Service agent.”

“The agent just bit the dust.”

“Shit.” He shifted the toothpick in his mouth. “Rusch?”

DeSantos shrugged. “Medevaced out. Burned pretty bad. How bad, I don’t know yet.”

“I assume they’ve activated COG,” Uzi said, referring to the Continuity of Government plan that provided for a shadow government to run the country’s infrastructure from a secure, hardened location in the event a terrorist attack wiped out Washington’s buildings and leadership.

DeSantos consulted his watch. “They should be boarding the transport choppers right about now. Until we get a handle on what the hell’s going on, Whitehall’s not taking any chances.”

Uzi glanced out at the wreckage. “Damn straight.”

“This kind of hit has gotta be a well-planned, coordinated attack. What do you think— al-Qaeda? Can they still pull off something like this?”

Uzi grunted. “There are sixty-nine major terrorist organizations in the world. Al-Qaeda’s a good place to start, but as to whether or not they could pull off something this complex, I don’t know. Not only have we taken out bin Laden, we’ve eliminated some of their top planners. Latest thinking is that AQ’s a loose collection of regional ‘affiliate’ groups that operate independently and use the AQ ‘brand’—no relationship to one another except for name and ideology. The stuff we found in bin Laden’s compound showed he was frustrated with those groups—they didn’t always do what he told them to do. But how AQ operated before we killed bin Laden, and how they’re operating now, could be different. Some think the leadership now sets the targets and their affiliates take care of business. Centralized decisions, decentralized execution.”

DeSantos shoved both hands into his jacket pockets. “And to think, we’re partially responsible for creating this beast.”

“How do you figure?”

“We bankrolled bin Laden back in the eighties.”

“Oh, that. Yeah, well, it’s the Middle East. Your friend today is your enemy tomorrow. That I get...but what kills me is that while we’re sending bin Laden two billion in taxpayer money to fight the Soviets, he was teaming up with a Palestinian Islamic member of the Muslim Brotherhood to build training camps in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda’s birth.”

“That shining moment in world history.” DeSantos tilted his head. “Two billion? Was it that much?”

“Something like that. Soon as we realized what was going on, we cut them off and shut down the banks that handled their money, but—”

“That’s when they started their own private banking system. The How— Howula?”

“
Hawala.
Yeah. Our sanctions worked, that was the good news. Bad news was it worked too well. It forced them to get their act together, form a more traditional centralized command and control structure. They used the illicit drug trade to develop affiliates and franchises in other countries. Bottom line—we had the right idea, but there was no way to know that freezing their money would force them to become a better organized, more professional organization.”

“Kind of like no way we could know that funding bin Laden to fight off the Soviets in the eighties could lead to him blowing up the Twin Towers and killing almost three thousand Americans twenty years later. What’s the saying? ‘Seemed like a good idea at the time’? At least we finally got the fucker.”

“Yeah, we got him. But I’m not sure how much good that really did. I mean, yeah, we avenged the thousands he’d killed. And taking him out may’ve disrupted the group and created a temporary leadership scramble. But in terms of impacting their effectiveness, not so much.”

“Maybe,” DeSantos said. “Maybe not. But if we go on the assumption that AQ is now more a network of franchised groups, what’s your gut say about who we should be looking at?”

Uzi blew a mouthful of air through his lips. “Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s generally considered the most dangerous, but close behind is Islamic Jihad of Yemen, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb, al-Shabaab, al-Humat, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, East Turkestan Islamic Movement. Maybe a handful of others.”

“I asked about your gut, not our Ten Most Wanted.”

As Uzi opened his mouth to reply, an electronic guitar sung from DeSantos’s pocket.

DeSantos patted his jacket, found the BlackBerry, and brought it to his face. “Yeah.” His eyes narrowed. “Okay.” He listened a moment, then turned to Uzi. “So much for the obvious.”

“We don’t want it to be too easy. That’d be no fun.” Uzi nodded at the phone.

“Not sure yet. Intel could be good, could be shit. I’ll check it out, let you know.” DeSantos’s voice—and gaze—suddenly drifted beyond Uzi’s shoulder. “Mm, mmm. Who’s that?”

Uzi turned and immediately locked on the woman DeSantos was looking at. “Don’t know. I ran into her a few minutes ago. My brain turned to mush.”

“Yeah, well, my other brain ain’t mush, I can tell you that.” DeSantos tilted his head. “Fine looking thing.”

“Aren’t you married?”

“Last time I checked, a marriage license didn’t come with blinders. Besides, Maggie and I have... an agreement.”

“I don’t think I want to hear it.”

“You probably don’t. Knowing you, it’d make your ears curl.”

Uzi was staring at the woman, watching her lean frame as she moved amongst the wreckage. “Yeah,” he said, not really hearing DeSantos’s comment.

“You know, you gave me shit, but looks to me like your radar’s locked in on the same target. You’re married—and I know your wife ain’t as understanding as Maggie.”

“Yeah.” Uzi tore his eyes from the woman. “I mean, no. It’s— It’s a long story.”

DeSantos’s gaze was again stuck to the woman’s body like Crazy Glue. “Miniskirt and high heels. Strange shit to be wearing at a crash scene, don’t you think?”

“Do me a favor, Santa. Get me her name and find out who she’s with.” Hoping his question wouldn’t initiate a discussion, he quickly added, “It’s for the investigation.”

DeSantos dipped his chin and looked at Uzi over the tops of his glasses. “Right. ‘The investigation.’”

Uzi saw three of his task force members approaching in the distance, led by Agent Hoshi Koh, his office confidante. He got their attention with the wave of a hand, then told DeSantos he would meet up with him later.

As DeSantos walked off to begin his own analysis, Uzi shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his long black leather coat and met his colleagues a few strides from the perimeter of the wreckage. He filled them in on what he knew— which wasn’t much. As Uzi expected, with the exception of Hoshi, they gave him a cold reception. Word traveled fast in field offices, even one as large as WFO.