The Beltway Assassin (11 page)

The choke hold on Zike left him an airway, but with no blood running to his brain, he was losing consciousness fast. Ritter tucked his head against the side of Zike’s face and took several blows to the back of his head as Zike tried to break his hold. It took ten long seconds of pummeling before Zike’s punches lost their fervor and he went slack.

Ritter held the choke hold for another few seconds to ensure Zike was out and not playing possum. Zike was still breathing and taking a nice nap as Ritter pushed himself up and looked around. He picked up his knife and looked down at Zike. It wasn’t like him to leave an enemy alive, but this was a different battlefield. He committed the man’s face to memory, because something told him he’d face this man again. He heard a sob coming from an open locker.

“Irene.” He felt like an ice pick was lodged in his side when he spoke. “Irene…Cupertino.” Ritter said the code word to identify himself.

“Redmond,” came from the locker, and Irene stepped out.

Ritter picked up his knife and resheathed it. He grabbed Irene by the hand and led her from the room.

****

They were in the woods bordering the building by the time the lights went back on. More emergency lights flashed from the parking lot, ambulances called in to deal with the wounded from Sparky’s explosive finale.

Ritter stopped and leaned against a tree, his arms wrapped around his chest.

“Are you okay?” Irene asked.

“It only…Ugh, it only hurts when I breathe,” Ritter said. He gasped air and closed his eyes, turning his focus away from the pain. “You have it? The DNA tests?”

Irene tapped her pocket and felt the micro USB still within.

“Yes, good thing, right? Else I’d be on my way to Guantanamo or something,” she said.

Ritter shook his head. “I came back for you. No one gets left behind. Ever,” he said. He pushed off from the tree and led her toward a distant streetlight visible through the bare trees where his car was parked.

****

Shelton pecked at his food, a plate of moderately tasty and overpriced pad thai, and checked his cell phone for the thousandth time. Tony had pushed an app to his smartphone that showed Garcia’s location. The junkie was still on a bus and making good time past Rosslyn.

“Tony, what’s he doing?” Shelton asked.

“No calls and no chitchat with the rest of the people on the bus. No surprise there,” Tony said. Shelton had to agree with Tony. He’d been in the DC area for almost a year and noticed that commuters had a strict death-before-eye-contact policy while aboard public transit.

Shelton shoved his food around his plate until Garcia exited the bus a few blocks from Shelton’s location. He left a couple of twenties on the table but didn’t bother for change. Spending Ritter’s money felt good, and the more of it he could spread to hardworking individuals like his waitress, the better. The few people at the restaurant and most of the wait staff were transfixed on the TV. The talking heads on the cable networks analyzed the latest DC-area bombing rumors and information drips over and over again. There hadn’t been such feverish coverage of an event since Anna Nicole Smith overdosed.

“Do you have eyes on him? If he goes underground, we’ll lose him,” Tony said.

Shelton saw Garcia on a street corner, looking around like a rabbit that had heard a hawk’s cry. Garcia pulled his light jacket tighter and crossed the street to a stairwell that led to the underground mall running most of the length of Crystal City.

Once it had been a particularly nasty slum, a developer had turned the area into a semi planned monument to the symbiotic relationship of American government and big business. Office towers housing government agencies were shoulder to shoulder with the headquarters of major contracting firms, such as Lockheed Martin; Northrup Grumman; and KBR, a division of Haliburton.

That the main thoroughfare through the city was Jefferson Davis Highway, named for the first president of the Confederate States of America, struck Shelton with a bit of irony.

“I’m on him.” Shelton hurried across the street and followed Garcia inside.

Crystal City’s economy thrived at one time of the day: lunch. The throng of government employees and an attendant legion of contractors filled the tables of restaurants, queued up for sandwiches, and shopped for marked-up goods at corner stores. During the evenings, when the workforce had gone home, Shelton swore he’d see a tumbleweed rolling down Crystal Drive.

A few people, including more than one indigent looking to escape the weather, wandered through the mall’s thoroughfare. Shelton glanced at his phone. Garcia’s trackers were still pinging, but the concrete and steel walls distorted them into several scattered locations deeper in the mall. Shelton pulled his badge from his coat and let it dangle over his chest.

Shelton heard Garcia through his earpiece. “Man, am I glad to see you.”

“Tony, where are they?” Shelton asked. He ran up to the entrance of a maintenance corridor branching off the promenade.

“They’re pinging across from a juice stand…fifty yards north of the entrance,” Tony said, uncertain.

Shelton took off running, wet shoes squeaking against the linoleum as he tried to make out Garcia past the stalls of cell phone cases and chotskies.

“Are you sure? I don’t see anyone,” Shelton said. He skidded to a halt in front of a juice stand. A pair of Somali men behind the counter stared at him—him with his badge and gun drawn—waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Hold on…All the concrete down there is playing hell with everything,” Tony said. “Can you get to the roof? That’s where he’s pinging from now.”

Shelton growled and whipped out his smartphone.
He’s screwing with me, trying to keep me away from Garcia
, he thought.

“What’re you doing?” Garcia said, his voice high with panic. The trackers warbled between a space at the end of the maintenance corridor and a clothing store on the other side of a concrete wall.

“Tony?” Shelton said with a loud whisper. “Tony!”

“I swear, I said nothing—” Garcia let out a grunt and fell silent.

“Goddamn it.” Shelton sprinted down the maintenance corridor, cocking his sidearm as he went. He shouldered his way past a door marked
employees only
and held his weapon out, safety off and finger on the trigger.

“FBI! Freeze!” Shelton shouted. The room, jumbled with wheeled garbage carts and the air thick with a mélange of cleaning products, was empty. Shelton saw a shadow move across a double door at the other end of the room right before it slammed shut.

Shelton mumbled a curse and knocked aside a garbage can to clear his path. He got three steps before he saw the body lying face down on the concrete.

Garcia had been stabbed, the knife still in his back. He trembled like a fish in the final seconds of suffocating in the air. His mouth opened and closed, his attempts to scream inutile with a punctured lung.

Shelton ran to Garcia’s side. “Stay still. We’ll get you some help.” He couldn’t remove the blade; that would make the bleeding worse. Garcia would need an ambulance and a surgical ward to survive.

Garcia’s eyes locked on Shelton, then lost focus. He went limp as his life ended.

The killer had done the deed with one, and only one, strike. Whoever had killed him knew how to use a knife; the blade had sliced Garcia’s heart and pierced a lung. But such skill wasn’t what gave Shelton pause. A plastic bag was pinned between the wound and the blade.

Shelton knelt beside the body and poked around bag; the plain white plastic could have come from a thousand different stores. The side of the bag against Garcia was bloody. The killer had used the bag to keep Garcia’s blood off him or her. Walking around with blood on one’s hands and clothes was a sure way to get noticed during a getaway.

“You need an ambulance?” Tony finally asked.

“Too little too late. He’s dead,” Shelton said. Blood seeped from the wound, creeping through Garcia’s jacket. A copper tang joined the smell of bleach and window cleaners. “We’ll need local police on this…Wait.”

The blade’s hilt was familiar. A blackened metal spike on the pommel, the miniscule steel checkerboard pattern on the grip, the upturned copper hand guard—he’d seen this knife before. During his first tour in Iraq, a fellow lieutenant had carried that kind of combat knife everywhere. That same man had the knife years later and had used it to kill an Iraqi insurgent, who stumbled into an army-occupied house during a sand storm.

Ritter.

Once before Shelton had handled Ritter’s blade, a masterwork of balance and lethal design. Ritter had said the blade was a gift from his last unit; he’d never expounded on that statement in the years he and Shelton had known each other. By Shelton’s memory, the blade had an inscription.

Shelton, his training for preserving the crime scene forgotten, wrenched the blade from Garcia’s back. The blade came loose with a wet pop. Fresh blood burbled from the wound. Shelton wiped the blade clean on Garcia’s jacket.

The words
cry havoc
were engraved on the blade of the Applegate-Fairbairn combat knife.

“Son of a bitch,” Shelton said. That was why Tony had sent him chasing after shadows—to give Ritter the window he needed to murder this witness. The blade felt cold in his hand, as if the malice behind the murder had become part of the weapon.

Shelton dropped the weapon next to the body and stood up. Garcia’s vanished criminal history, Ritter and the CIA’s involvement in a stateside murder investigation, and their distrust of the FBI…All this made Shelton feel like a pawn in a much larger game.

This was just like Ritter to use a Byzantine plot to cover his involvement in some grand scheme, and Shelton would be left holding the bag when it was all over. Ritter had used their friendship to obfuscate his crimes in Iraq. Now he was using his leverage over Shelton to string Shelton along like a fish on a hook.

Shelton’s adult life had been service before self. He’d fought in his nation’s wars without fanfare or hubris for the sacrifices he’d made: his injured body, a strained marriage, and daughters who barely knew their father. Yet beneath the humble exterior, there was still a sense of pride. Pride trampled by Ritter’s betrayal and worn out by keeping his mouth shut for so long.

Now Ritter had finally given Shelton the leverage he needed to expose Ritter for what he really was: a murderer. The blade in Garcia’s body was the first modicum of physical evidence damning Ritter.

One thing the FBI had taught him was that one piece of evidence wouldn’t convince a jury beyond the shadow of a doubt. He didn’t have enough to take down Ritter yet. Jefferson, whoever he was, was the key to the murders and the connection Shelton needed to tie Ritter to a web of injustice and broken laws.

Shelton left the body behind. He’d have to keep playing this game until it came time to make his move. Even a pawn can trap a king.

****

Jefferson plodded through the muddy ground leading to his tent, arms wrapped around his body, head low and a steady stream of nonsense coming from his mouth. The smell of marijuana and burning camp stoves was around him. He fell on his knees at his tent and took a whole two minutes to unlock his tent with palsied hands.

He tore through a black duffel bag until he found a pill bottle. Three pills went into his mouth, which he chewed like they were made of ambrosia. He dry-swallowed the mush in his mouth and wiped his hands over his face the requisite thirty-seven times to satisfy his OCD.

He curled into a fetal position and quivered for thirty minutes before the pills took hold.

A cold realization came over him; he’d thrown away the armor of anonymity when he killed that woman in the library. The library’s cameras and a dozen people with cell phones must have his photo. His face must be on every TV screen by now. Even the true believers in the Occupy camp would rat him out once they heard of what he’d done. A little more time and his crusade would end in the back of a squad car.

There was option left for him, a last ditch effort to stave off capture he’d planned with Garcia. With a little luck he could give his final gesture both meaning and purpose.

“There’s no choice now…I have to do it,” he said. “Have to, have to—that bitch!” Jefferson pressed his palms to his temple and forced himself to focus. Even at the end he had a ritual to follow. That’s how he knew his cause was righteous, just like the Iranian had taught him.

A sheet of paper in a book bore a list of targets, men and women responsible for the travesty in Iraq. Cowards who’d sent others to bleed for them. But the list was incomplete; he’d told the Iranian that much. That was why he’d added to it.

Jefferson highlighted Congressman Hawker’s name. Once the deed was done, someone would find his work, see what he’d meant to do, and cross Hawker’s name out for him and continue his crusade. Yes, the revolution would begin with his final strike against the oppressors.

The suicide vest in the duffel bag was mostly assembled. Jefferson sank the detonators into the explosives and slid the vest over his shoulders. The weight felt like an angel’s touch, the promise of heaven for his divine work. The other vest, meant for the coward Garcia, would remain behind. Let it be a gift for whoever would continue his work.