The Beltway Assassin (4 page)

Ritter heard the snap of a latex glove. Shelton proffered a small paper bag to Ritter with a gloved hand. Ritter dropped the casing in the bag.

“You have no idea how to handle evidence,” Shelton said.

“At least I can find it,” Ritter shot back. He looked up at the bruised purple clouds, which hung low in the sky; he didn’t need a forecaster to know rain was imminent. “Hurry, find the other casing.”

“How do you know there’s another one?” Shelton asked.

“Your witness heard one distinct shot. That didn’t set off the bomb, so there must have been another shot,” Ritter said. He stepped toward the firing position and searched the ground around him.

Shelton followed suit. He stopped two steps later and sniffed the air. “You smell that?”

“Bleach. The shooter sprayed down his firing location to ruin any DNA evidence,” Ritter said.

“I’m not following how a bullet is supposed to—”

“Stop!” Ritter shouted.

Shelton froze in place, one foot inches above the ground.

“Move your right foot to the side,” Ritter said.

Shelton complied and saw another bullet casing. He picked it up with his own pen cap and put it in a separate paper sack.

“How’d you guess a bullet triggered the bomb? And how is that even possible?” Shelton asked.

“After our parting, I went to Mosul to deal with an IED cell that was too effective for their own good. Local army unit kept getting hit on one particular spot, but there were no triggers—no cell phones, garage door openers, command wires. Nothing to set off the device,” Ritter said. “Reason we couldn’t find the trigger was because there was no trigger as part of the device.

“We didn’t figure that out until we called in a Navy SEAL sniper team to support a sweep and clear. The SEAL took out a hajji sniper during the operation. Turns out that hajji had a bead on an intersection where we found fifty kilos of homemade explosives in a water can but no trigger. The sniper was setting the bombs off by shooting them. All the electronic countermeasures we had against radio and cell phone triggers were useless,” Ritter said.

“Have you ever heard of Tannerite? It’s an exploding target, a binary explosive made from ammonium nitrate and aluminum. Sounds like what we’re dealing with,” Shelton said.

“Is it hard to get?” Ritter asked. The scarcer it was, the easier it would be to track.

“No, you can get it on Amazon, eBay, whatever. Besides, we could get the ammonium nitrate from cold packs without any trouble,” Shelton said.

Ritter frowned. Chasing down the explosive used would be futile and didn’t answer a pressing question. “Why go through that kind of trouble of using a bullet to set off a bomb when the victim doesn’t have jammers around him?” Ritter asked.

“Evidence, Eric. The perp doesn’t want to leave any evidence behind,” Shelton said. He took out a small digital camera from his coat and started taking pictures of the area.

“But the shell casings,” Ritter said. “He had to get the hell away from here after the bomb goes off, so those got left behind. This is a gated community. Anyone drive out after the explosion?”

“No, the community keeps video record of when the gates open and close, so our bomber probably knew that,” Shelton said.

Ritter pointed to the asphalt path in the distance. “Where does that go?”

“That is the Washington and Old Dominion trail, an old railroad line a bunch of tree huggers turned into a nature walk. It runs from Purceville to the east clear into Arlington, forty five miles long.”

“He got in and out on bicycle. Smart,” Ritter said. “Carry the disassembled rifle in a backpack.” He made his way to the beaten grass, where the sniper had lain, and poked at the ground with the tip of his foot. He knelt down and moved a grass-covered potato sack lying over a small depression in the ground. “He put the explosives here beforehand. The rifle and the bomb were too much to carry at once.”

Ritter looked toward the crime scene. “That’s about…three hundred yards from here?”

“About. Not a hard shot for a trained marksman. Everyone who’s ever put on a military uniform has been trained to make a shot that far out,” Shelton said. “Lots of preparation for this crime. No way was the victim chosen at random. What do you know about him?”

Ritter stood up and knocked the dirt from his knees. “Just the basic bio details.”

“So a bomb goes off in Ashburn, and whoever the hell you work for just sends you over for shits and giggles?” Shelton crossed his arms across his chest.

Cold dollops of rain fell. Drops hit Ritter on the head, cold enough to waver on the border of rain and sleet. The rain fell harder, sucking the heat from Ritter’s body as it soaked through his coat.

“The bomber—we think we’ve seen him at work before in Israel and Gaza,” Ritter said. “Same M-O. If we can determine it’s him, then we have more options for dealing with him.”

Shelton wrapped the two paper bags in a plastic bag and jammed the package under his coat. His breath turned to mist as the air temperature plummeted.

“Let’s get this over to the command truck for processing,” Shelton said. He made his way to an easy slope down and around the hill, then ran into Ritter’s outstretched arm.

“No, we keep this close to the vest,” Ritter said.

Shelton smacked Ritter’s hand away and snarled, “I have a protocol—”

“You have precisely nothing to do beyond what I say,” Ritter said. “Your buddies around the coffeepot will go screaming after any lead they get, good or not. We’ll take this in for analysis and share if we need to.”

“This is the first piece of evidence we have that might lead somewhere, and you want to hide it?” Shelton shook his head in disbelief.

“
Might
being the magic word,” Ritter said. “Let’s get this to the lab and see where it leads.”

Interstate 495, the highway nicknamed the Beltway since it formed a ring around Washington, DC, is as infamous for its traffic as for its location. Significant portions of the highway could turn into a parking lot with the slightest provocation, be it a fender bender, a struck deer, or a wayward yellow cone on the side of the road.

Max McBride gunned his BMW M6 forward another ten feet in his plodding and inexorable progress to the exit in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He grumbled as his wipers shoved aside another sheen of freezing rain. Red taillights glared at him through the drizzle.

“Come on,” he said as he checked his cell phone for the time. He was scheduled to speak at a Heritage Foundation grip and grin, but this traffic wasn’t cooperating with his plans. DC had some of the worst traffic in the nation on a good day. Add moisture to the equation, and spilled molasses could make better time.

McBride picked up his speaking notes from the passenger seat and went over the main points of his speech for the umpteenth time. Monetary policy and the Fed’s artificially low interest rates wouldn’t excite most listeners, but the Heritage Foundation, which had several senators and congressmen from the nation’s more conservative districts, was interested.

The $80,000 speaking fee had interested McBride most of all.

A horn from behind made him jerk his head up. Ten bare yards of asphalt beckoned to him. Ahead, a tall, scraggly-looking vagrant meandered between the idling cars, knocking on windows. The vagrant wore a too-big overcoat, pregnant with rain water, which sloshed around him as he moved. McBride’s BMW made a small advance, and he turned his attention back to his notes.

The vagrant knocked on the driver’s side window of the car ahead of McBride. McBride grabbed his cell phone and thumbed through the numbers to his contact at the conference. Might as well call in a little late. The traffic on 495 was equal for all the attendees who were commuting from DC proper; no one would complain about a fifteen-minute delay.

McBride kept his phone to his ear and his eyes down on his notes as the vagrant approached. McBride hoped his preoccupation would be enough of a hint to the vagrant to keep moving.

Knuckles rapped against his window. McBride kept his head down.

Another knock.

“How does it feel?” came from beyond his window.

McBride glanced up at the vagrant. The man had bent over and stared at McBride through the water-streaked window. His bearded face was soaked by rain; bloodshot eyes quivered in their sockets. McBride felt the icy scratch of fear in his gut; the mentally unstable always made him nervous.

“How does it feel to have so much blood on your hands?” the vagrant asked, his voice muted by the glass.

McBride shrugged and shifted his BMW into drive. Something thumped against his door as he drove away from the vagrant. He glanced at his rearview mirror and saw the man cut across traffic and vault over the road guard.

“Damn wackos,” McBride said.

The car to his left honked twice. He looked up to see nothing but bumper lights ahead. The car next to him honked again.

“Hey! Hey, mister!” someone shouted.

McBride rolled his eyes and turned his head. This commute was going to be enough of an annoyance to earn a Twitter rant.

From her car, a young woman with thick glasses and dark hair motioned to him to roll down his window. McBride rolled down his window just enough to expose his chin.

“Mister, you got something on your door,” she said, pointing to his front-side door.

McBride rolled his window down the rest of the way and peered over the side. There was a black plastic box stuck to his door. He grabbed the box and tried to pry it off, but it was stuck fast.

“What is that?” the woman asked.

“Hell if I—”

The blast propelled hundreds of screws and washers through McBride’s door, shredding him into mangled flesh. The shrapnel tore through the next two lanes of traffic, instantly killing four people. The blast wave opposite the shrapnel wave crushed the young woman’s face and blew her out the other side of her car.

Sound from the explosion rumbled as far away as the Mall and the parking lot at the Pentagon.

****

To Ritter, the weirdest thing about the FBI’s TEDAC building was the color. Whoever had decided that a light-yellow color for a multistory building in the middle of Quantico’s Marine Corps base forest had either a horrible sense of humor or the artistic sensibilities of a bureaucrat who’d found a deal on canary-colored paint.

He and Shelton walked toward the entrance over thin puddles left from the day’s rain. Ritter looked over the building, noting camera locations and access points other than the front door. There wasn’t any visible security other than a contract security guard lounging in a golf cart on the ground floor of the parking garage.

Shelton opened the first double set of doors and let Ritter pass him. Ritter got a sideways look at the inches-thick bulletproof glass door as he went inside. At the entrance were a secure box, security gates, and more bulletproof glass meant to keep an armed assailant from getting beyond the armed guard, who looked Ritter over with more than a passing interest. Ritter’s Glock 23 handgun under his jacket set off the metal detector.

Ritter feigned annoyance and flashed his badge for the security guard, who scowled at him.

“Sir, you need to remove your firearm
before
you pass through the detector. They don’t have that protocol at your home office?” the guard asked.

Ritter unsnapped the fitted plastic holster from his belt and handed it over, weapon and all.

“Sorry, my mistake,” Ritter said. He took a ticket from the guard and looked at Shelton, who stood beyond the metal detector with a smirk.

He let me go first so I’d screw up in front of the guard
, Ritter thought.
What a pal.

Ritter left the security entrance and waited for Shelton at an elevator bank. After a second, he pushed the
call
button. He moved into an elevator after a door opened and hit the
close
button. Shelton caught a glimpse of Ritter as the doors shut and rushed to the elevator. Shelton jammed a foot between the doors and got them to reopen.

“You know where you’re going?” Shelton asked.

“Sort of. I just thought you might appreciate some passive-aggressive bullshit too,” Ritter said as he hit the button for the third floor.

Shelton rolled his shoulders to adjust his jacket. He looked at Ritter as if he were a dog that had defiled a carpet. “What’s the matter, spy guy? You need me to hold your hand while you play FBI?” Shelton asked.

“Keep fucking around and see if you can get a job as a mall security guard. Do you want to get this bomber or not?” Ritter said. Ritter knew he was on thin ice, but there was no way he could portray that to Shelton. If Ritter was arrested for impersonating a federal agent, there was some ambiguity as to whether Shannon could get him released.

As a non-official cover (NOC) officer, Ritter’s work in foreign countries was always done without the net of diplomatic immunity employed by CIA spies who traipsed around under the guise of State Department employees. A bribe or extraction from custody with varied levels of violence might mitigate a police arrest in third world countries. To do the same in America was…dicey. Shelton had Ritter over a barrel, but he probably didn’t know it.

“Arrest, Eric. I make arrests,” Shelton said. The doors to the elevator opened with a ding.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Play along, and we’ll get this done faster than waiting for your bureaucrats to approve every decision in writing and in triplicate.”

Ritter stepped from the elevator and looked up and down the hallway. “Where is—?”

“Ballistics is to the right, rookie,” Shelton said.

“No, the person we’re looking for is…” Ritter glanced at the numbers on a door and went left.

They passed a glass-enclosed office, where two technicians poured a viscous, black liquid into a flattened copper cone. A cart with dozens of copper cones, a centimeter thick and varying from the width of a can of soda to a dinner plate, was next to their workstation. The technicians ignored Ritter and Shelton’s passing.

“Explosively formed projectiles. All the parts from Iraq and Afghanistan come here for exploitation,” Shelton said.

“Never my problem set,” Ritter said. Iran-backed insurgents in Iraq almost always used explosively formed projectiles, EFPs. His focus had been on the al-Qaeda militants in Iraq’s Sunni heartland, a place not known for Iranian influence.

Ritter stopped in front of an opaque glass door, checked the numbers, and knocked.

A few seconds later an Asian woman in her early twenties opened the door. Her straight hair fell over her shoulders, outlining a V-shaped pale face. The powder-blue lab coat looked like a tent over her rail-thin frame.

“Oh…um…” Her eyes rolled up and to the right as she tried to remember something. “Are you looking for Stacy? She’s at the dentist’s office,” Irene said, giving the code that there wasn’t any danger to her or Ritter.

“Sure hope she can make it to dinner later,” Ritter said, returning the same status.

Irene, one of the Caliban Program’s newest analysts, stepped aside and let Ritter and Shelton in. The lab was sparse and looked as if it had been cleaned out a few hours ago. A single laptop glowed on a countertop next to a dirty set of beakers.

“I’m waiting on the IT Department to set up computer workstations, which is taking forever,” Irene said. “By ‘forever,’ I mean I actually have to wait for it to happen. More analysts are coming in from Colombia. You wouldn’t believe how much effort this case is getting from these goofballs.”

Shelton cleared his throat.

“Is this your beard?” Irene asked Ritter.

“His what?” Shelton stroked his five o’clock stubble.

“Nothing,” Ritter said over his shoulder before turning his attention back to Irene. “You have a run of the place?”

Irene tapped the host of badges hanging from her lanyard. “You flash the right one of these, and you can get most anything you want around here. I swear, they think I’m from Area 51 or something.”

“We have something. Need to get prints, ballistics, and DNA off it right away,” Ritter said. He motioned to Shelton with one hand, a misdirection while his other hand tapped in a code on the cell phone in his pocket.

Shelton handed over the bullet casings. He opened his mouth to speak, but a ringing cell phone preempted him. He pulled it from his pocket and looked at the caller.

“My wife. Be right back,” he said and left the room.

Ritter waited until the door was closed before he pulled Irene into an embrace. He cupped a hand under the back of her head and pressed his cheek to hers.

“You have the bugs running?” he whispered into her ear.

“Yes. Tony said everything’s as it should be.” She wrapped her arms around him and clasped her hands on his lower back.

“If you’re compromised, get out of here and get to the safe house,” he said. He ran a hand down her arm and squeezed her elbow. Anyone watching would assume they were taking the assumed privacy for a moment’s passion. Cindy, Ritter’s lover, wouldn’t complain about this bit of tradecraft, but she sure wouldn’t like it.

“I’m not some friggin’ ninja like you. What if someone shows up with a gun?” she said, fear in her voice.

“Just get the tests done before—”

The door flew open, and Shelton barged in. “She must have butt dialed me because…the hell?”

Ritter and Irene jumped apart. Ritter adjusted his tie, and Irene pulled her hand from Ritter’s back pocket.

“Hey,” a voice said from the open doorway. A technician with greasy hair and a puffy face stuck his head in the doorway. “You guys might want to come see this. Nobody’s getting the weekend off now. TV’s on in the break room.”

Shelton frowned at Ritter and Irene, then followed the technician down the hall. Ritter looked at Irene and at his rear end which she’d been touching mere moments ago, confusion written on his face. Irene shrugged and raised her hands, expressing her own confusion.

Ritter felt his face flush. Irene wasn’t trained for field operations and must not have known that a surreptitious ass grab wasn’t part of the maneuver. He’d keep it quiet, since Irene would lose fingers if Cindy ever got wind of what had just happened.

In the break room, a dozen FBI employees were watching a flat-screen TV on the wall. The live news feed showed several smoldering cars on a highway. Large text decried “The Beltway Bomber?” next to a small map showing the highway ringing the capital. A small burning animation sat on the graphic where the bomb had gone off, another on Ashburn where Bendis had met his fate.

“An IED on the Beltway. Can you believe this?” someone said.

“It sure wasn’t buried under the highway,” Irene said. She plucked at her lower lip as she concentrated on the news feed.

“How do you know that?” Ritter asked loudly enough for the rest of the room to hear the question. If he could get all these analysts on the problem, so much the better.