Quantico

CHAPTER THREE Year Zero Arizona

Special Agent Rebecca Rose stared through the window of the FBI Econoline van at the dark desert along the highway. Brian Botnik from the Phoenix Field Office looked sideways at Rose in the front passenger seat. She rubbed her hand nervously over her knee—gray pants, cuff of dark pink cotton blouse protruding half an inch from her coatsleeve, fingers thin and strong, red-enameled nails bitten short and chipped. It was five a.m. and she could almost see the heat of the past day rising slowly into space. That’s what happened at night—the Earth shed its heat like a cooling corpse. The sun hid away, nowhere to be seen; maybe it would never return.

‘Gerber’s a good fellow,’ Botnik said. ‘But he hates being kept in the dark. So tell me—why are we keeping him in the dark?’ Botnik was a big man with a deep voice, a tight stomach, farmer’s hands, and sandy hair—attractive, had she the energy to think about such things. Ten years younger than her, she guessed, but neither inexperienced nor a dummy.

Rose smiled. ‘Because if I tell him why we’re interested, he’ll think we’re idiots.’

‘I’m open to that possibility,’ Botnik said, flashing a grin.

‘Hush,’ Rose said.

Two FBI analysts sat in the middle seat behind them. Both were young, white, clean-cut, and male. Both were respectful and earnest. Little pitchers have big ears. The younger, whiter, and more clean-cut the male agent, the more likely he would talk behind her back.

After the flights and the drive from Tucson, she was bone-tired and on the edge of hallucinations; her science and most of her sense had fled. But she had to stay tactical. This would not be easy. Every cop seemed to regard FBI agents, especially senior agents, as short-timers going down for the third time in a flood of politics. Some felt sorry, others exhibited a parochial gloat. It was getting harder and harder to focus on work even when she wasn’t exhausted.

The headline of the newspaper folded across the divider read:

FBI ‘PATRIOT’ FILES KEPT ON

6 DEM SENATORS, VP:

‘Traitors to the Nation’, Dossiers Claim

Rose was acquainted with the agents who had prepared those dossiers. Two were clowns; she had thought that the other six were good men. Now they were buried in the depths of Headquarters or testifying before a federal grand jury. One and all, they had messed their britches.

Screw that. Just do your job.

The first sign of happy times along the highway was a single-vehicle set of peel-out marks. Sixty yards further on, deep truck-tire gouges marred the right shoulder. In the blink of an eye, a second pair of smudges like strokes of artist’s charcoal extended for thirty feet. A half-mile beyond that, multiple curving conga lines of laid-down rubber—some parallel, some crossing—played with the divider for a hundred yards. Those tracks ended at an overturned and battered big rig trailer.

Patrol officers were stationed to flag drivers through the single open lane. At this hour of the morning there was almost no traffic.

Botnik steered the Econoline to the side of the road, parking behind a gray Suburban marked with Arizona’s rising sun. As Rose stepped out and stretched, the young agents pulled aluminum cases from the rear of the van. Botnik introduced her to three Department of Public Safety officers. Lieutenant Colonel Jack Gerber, the Deputy Director of Criminal Investigations, had been dispatched from Phoenix along with two analysts. They had been waiting at the scene for three hours. Remarkably they were still willing to pretend not to be teed off.

Gerber was a tall lean man in his late forties with straight black hair and a brown boyish face lacking any trace of a beard. Multi-racial, Rose judged: American Indian, Anglo, and some black. America’s future. His eyes were brown and his large fingernails curved around the upper half of each fingertip, rounded and neatly manicured.

Rose walked with Gerber and Botnik back along the highway and studied the scene from the beginning of the skid marks. Gerber was explaining what little they knew. ‘The chase must have begun about ten miles back. Patrolman Porter queried the truck’s RFLM—Radio Frequency License and Manifest transponder—and got a bogus authentication. When the truck’s driver ignored his lights and siren and the truck failed to respond to Cop Block, the patrolman became aware he might have a situation. We get a lot of drug traffic. Patrolman Porter was an excellent officer, very keen on his job.’

All cars and trucks in the U.S. were now required to have Cop Block. A patrol car could radio a coded signal that slowed and then shut down the engine. Workarounds were illegal and the fines were expensive, plus real jail time.

The rig had jackknifed and the trailer had flipped and twisted the truck along with it, corkscrewing the rear frame and tires a quarter turn. The International 9200 had then split off from the trailer and skidded on its side for fifty-two yards, leaving a broad scrape of paint and sidewall rubber and lots of fresh gray grooves in the asphalt. The trailer’s rear doors had sprung open and about a third of the contents had tumbled out, depositing a trail of white boxes along the road, most of them intact.

They were all inkjet printers.

Rose held back an urge to request that the trailer and the boxes be marked off and tested by a HAZMAT team. Too early and too obvious, a tipping of her hand. She had yet to bring out her WAGD—pronounced Wag-Dee, for Wright Assay Germ Detector—a biohazard analyzer the size and shape of a large Magic Marker. She carried two in her coat pocket. Some in the field called the WAGD the Death Stick. Others had corrupted the acronym to ‘We’re All Gonna Die.’

One of the white boxes had ripped open. She pulled back a flap and bent to peer inside. The printer had fallen out of its foam packing. Its top had broken off, exposing the metal tracking bars and ribbon cables within. The cartridge wells were empty.

‘We’re still not sure what happened after that,’ Gerber said. ‘Porter must have been ahead of the truck when it flipped—it’s our procedure to park behind an accident and switch on all lights, to warn traffic. At around eight p.m., the officer was shot three times. He had not called in the wreck, and he did not call in his situation. He must have been surprised. We think there was another man, perhaps hiding in the trailer. The officer did manage to get off two shots. Neither of them hit the truck.’

‘Patrolman Porter’s Infodeck—when did it last make its uplink?’

‘Seven forty-one,’ Gerber said. ‘Nothing unusual. He was at the Bluebird Tall Stack, a truck stop. You passed it on the way here.’

‘We did,’ Rose said.

The reflecting tape between the lighted mobile cone barriers flapped in the early morning breeze. A patrolman waved through a small silver Toyota. It drove slowly around the scene, well clear of the rippling tape, its middle-aged female driver goggling.

Colonel Gerber was being straightforward and professional, and for that Rose was grateful. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a WAGD, hiding most of it in her palm and up her sleeve, then swiftly uncapped it, bent over the open printer box, and ran the moist gel tip along the inside and across the printer carriage. She capped and pocketed the device, then moved on with Gerber.

Twenty yards further on, the patrol car was a blackened shell hunkered on the right shoulder and facing the wrong direction—east. It had been set on fire with gas siphoned from its own tank. The patrol car’s tires had burned to the steel belts. Melted aluminum traced shiny rivers down to the roadside gravel. Whatever onboard data—video, officer commentary, the contents of the patrol car’s orange box—that had not been transferred by satellite link from the car’s Infodeck had been destroyed.

A small grass fire had been extinguished by a quick light rain minutes after the wreck.

The officer’s body had been found on the north shoulder of the road, ten yards from the burnt-out patrol car. The body had been removed by the Pima County Medical Examiner but a silver marker line still recorded its outline. A rain-diluted smear of blood pointed in the direction of the cruiser, about thirty feet away.

In the center of the outline, a small spherical projector sitting on a hammered peg threw out grainy patterns of blue and red light.

‘Glasses?’ Rose asked.

Gerber offered a pair from his pocket. She unfolded the temple pieces and slipped them on. The officer’s body came into clear view, frozen in place and lit all around by multiple strobes. Legs straight, arms limp and angled.

‘The body was moved before we got here,’ Gerber said.

She walked around the projector and stooped. Patrolman Porter’s body looked perfectly solid against the black pavement. Had he been closer to the cruiser, he would have burned. Someone dragged him across the highway. A bystander? The killer?

Why have empathy for a dead or dying cop?

Projectors were good but the emotional assault of seeing an actual corpse always heightened her senses. Death so close, injustice everywhere. Still, the photographer had done a good job. The 3-D image was clean and sharp. In a few hours, no doubt, the ME and the CID would merge their data and she could call up the same projection and see a reconstruction of the officer’s stance, the lines along which the slugs had traveled, his reaction to the force of tons of accelerated mass hitting his shoulder, his chest, his neck.

The FBI evidence techs had fanned out along the road and were busy taking pictures, checking the interior of the truck’s cab, scraping paint and rubber off the road, setting up survey poles and lasers, repeating much of what Gerber’s people had already done.

‘You still haven’t told me why the feds are interested in a few hundred gray-market computer printers,’ Gerber said. ‘Obsolete models, too.’

‘We’re curious where the truck was going. Whether it had any escorts.’

Gerber flipped his hand at the International. ‘There’s no driver log, no valid license, no bills of lading or any of the records required for interstate transport. The truck seems to have been modified in Mexico and driven across state lines about two months ago—we have a video of a rig with that federal ID number crossing the border at that time, with all its papers in order. But the last registered owner claims he sold it in Mexico six years ago. Still, the truck had a Grit Mitt and seemed to be trying to meet current highway standards—other than Cop Block, of course. Nor are there any signs of these printers being a dummy cargo—our K-9s just looked bored. We’re still pursuing the trail…but backwards, not forwards. I have no idea where this rig was going, and if we don’t catch the second man, or woman, we’ll probably never know.’

‘Second man or woman?’

‘Just a possibility. Someone gave our perp or perps a ride. Between here and the next town it’s fifty miles of nothing. Long walk. We’ve looked. And no hospital here or across either border reports anyone with gunshot injuries.’ He rubbed a light stubble on his chin. ‘We’re done. Let us know when can we clear our highway.’

‘Thanks for your patience. I need another hour.’

‘Porter was a smart patrolman. Nobody could have just got the drop on him,’ Gerber said. ‘This whole thing is an awful mess.’

‘Amen,’ Rose said, getting back to her feet. She folded the glasses and returned them to Gerber. ‘Was Porter married?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Gerber said. He called to one of his analysts, a short, plump man with a dapper mustache. ‘Earl, was Porter married?’

‘No, sir,’ Earl said, glad to get in on the conversation. He had been checking out Rose. ‘Never married. Patrol was his life. Well, he liked to drive to Vegas once a year.’

‘Eager?’ Rose asked.

‘The best always are,’ Gerber said. He sniffed and peered around the highway and the distant hills. His irritation was about to break through. ‘As long as you’re here, I’d be fascinated to hear your take. I’m sure it’s filled with exceptional, FBI-level insight.’

Sometimes, cops let other cops reel out a little rope. Whoever went first was eager to jump to conclusions. Earl backed off and returned to his group.

Rose said, ‘I’m curious as to how your cruiser ends up spun around in front of a jackknifed semi.’

‘A curious situation,’ Gerber agreed.

‘You’ve had problems with escort vehicles that can interrupt communications. Are you looking for a jammer?’ Rose glanced up at Botnik, ten yards off. He could hear their conversation. He gave her a quick nod, out of Gerber’s sight.

‘Should we be?’ Gerber asked innocently.

‘There could have been two vehicles,’ Rose continued, ‘one traveling a few minutes behind the other. The first, our International and its trailer, must have attracted Porter’s attention. He decided to bird-dog the rig and look for an excuse to pull it over.’

‘Okay,’ Gerber said, and stuck his hands in his pockets. They were walking side by side now, the best of chums.

The WAGD was still quiet.

‘The second vehicle could have followed at a discreet distance,’ Rebecca said. ‘Porter lit up and pulled the rig over for inspection. Maybe the driver couldn’t produce the right papers. He called for backup but didn’t get a response.’

‘We received no request for backup,’ Gerber said, but he wasn’t disagreeing.

‘Porter’s Infodeck told him he was off the grid and he couldn’t make direct radio contact. His display told him he was being jammed.’

‘All right.’

‘With the rig pulled over, the occupant or occupants of the second vehicle decided to make a run for it. Porter suspected this was the jammer, got his wind up, ordered his first quarry to stay put, and took off after the second truck.’

Gerber looked thoughtful. ‘Evidence?’ he asked pleasantly.

‘Nothing, really,’ Rose said. ‘Unless we count tire marks a few miles back, two vehicles peeling out, not far from a long set of truck tracks in the gravel.’

‘Mm,’ Gerber said, and his smile broadened. She wasn’t ahead of him yet. He knew about those marks. ‘Jammers work for hire and don’t carry contraband. Porter knew the drill. He would have let the little one go.’

‘But you said he was a gambler,’ Rose said. ‘Right? Unmarried, eager, a Vegas kind of guy. Patrol was his life. For just a few seconds, he couldn’t think past the glory of making a twofer—of pulling over a rich cargo, and grabbing a jammer besides.’

‘Are we about to cast aspersions on an officer who can’t defend himself?’ Gerber asked. His face was professionally blank but his pupils had widened.

‘Not at all,’ Rose said. ‘Happens to the best of us.’

Gerber squinted. ‘Tell me, why would any driver risk a chase and the hoosegow for a load of old printers?’

Gerber had spent a lifetime figuring out what people were really interested in. Rose walked back toward the burnt-out patrol car. ‘Porter reacquired his perspective after a peek in the rear view mirror. He saw the rig get underway and quickly decided to give up on the jammer. He and the rig played a little chicken. Risky, but maybe not out of character. He got in front and tried to brake the rig to a stop—got tapped, spun out…and the rig jackknifed and flipped. Porter ended up by the side of the road, reversed.’

She stood beside the distorted, blackened curve of the cruiser’s driver’s side door. ‘Porter squatted behind the door and drew down on the truck cab. Based on chase maneuvers and the spin-out, his Infodeck would have automatically attempted to re-connect and call for urgent backup, and he probably surmised the jammer would soon be out of range.’

‘All right,’ Gerber said. ‘Now explain to me, how did he end up getting shot? Did the jammer return? Was he caught in a crossfire?’

Botnik and Earl approached. ‘No fingerprints or blood inside the truck cab,’ Botnik told Rose. ‘No food items or cups or urine jugs. Nothing much at all. We’re fuming and dusting the exterior, but I’ll bet the driver was wearing gloves.’

Rose stood behind the burned-out cruiser door, looked back at the rig, drew sight-lines. Then she and Botnik crossed the highway and walked along the south side. Gerber and Earl glanced both ways for traffic—the road was almost empty—and followed. ‘Did you work the ditch here, off the shoulder?’ she asked.

Gerber turned to Earl. The younger man shook his head, uncertain whether he was admitting to a mistake.

Botnik caught on right away. ‘Jesus. Sounds like some sort of combat vet.’

Gerber was now the one short on rope. He looked along the length of the ditch and saw how a man could have exited the International and crawled along the ditch without being seen. His face wrinkled. ‘Shit.’

‘After the wreck,’ Rose said, ‘Porter may have called for the driver to get out or shout if he was unable to comply.’ She took two steps into the ditch, put her hand on her hips, raised her right arm, then lined up her eye and her pointing finger with the position that Porter would have assumed beside his cruiser. ‘From this angle, the shooter could have watched and waited until Porter got impatient and stood up. The first shot passed over the hood and between the door and the window frame and hit Porter in his left shoulder. Porter may have been knocked half about, then lurched forward and hung on to the door. The second shot could have passed through his neck, spinning him around again, and the third impacted the chest. The neck wound, was it from the side or rear?’

Gerber pointed to the right rear of his own neck.

She stepped gingerly along the rocks. ‘Rough crawl, but someone well-trained could have done it in thirty seconds or less. Your shooter pushed up…Here and here.’ She pointed to the rain-softened remains of two gouges, one shallow, one deep in the gravel and dirt. ‘Knee mark. Toe of shoe or boot digging in. No sole imprint. He shot your patrolman three times, then walked across the highway and made sure he was dead or dying. The assailant then dragged Porter away from the car.’

She finished with, ‘Our shooter unplugged the Infodeck, removed the officer’s data vest, tossed it in the car, then set the car on fire and cooked the memory so there wouldn’t be any record. But for some reason, the assailant was squeamish about letting an officer burn. Even a dead one.’

Gerber’s jaw muscles flexed. ‘All that, for old printers?’ he asked.

Botnik gave Rose a hard stare.

‘I can’t see it,’ Gerber said. ‘Too many holes. I think we have drug runners getting creative. Maybe this time, the escort vehicle carried both contraband and jamming equipment, with the International truck, full of a dummy load, acting as decoy. Hell, you could pack ten million dollars worth of Tart in a suitcase. Maybe Porter saw the printers, surmised the rig wasn’t carrying, and went after the jammer. That explains the tire tracks.’

‘Then why would the driver of the rig light out?’ Rose asked. ‘Why not just stay put, act innocent, plead to a misdemeanor and get a ticket?’

Because he did not want anyone to learn about his printers.

The bastard knows I’m looking for him.

‘I believe in the competence of our patrol officers,’ Gerber said, his face flushed. ‘We’re done here, Agent Rose.’

‘Mm hmm.’ Rose knelt in the gravel and rocks and looked hard at the ground around the knee imprint and the toe mark. Didn’t feel right torching an officer. What sort of smuggler…?

A former cop?

Rose pictured the driver of the International biting on his glove’s fingers to pull it off. It could have dangled from his teeth as he fired at Porter. She got down on her hands and knees. Urban cops tended to wear close-weave protected gloves, to reduce the chances of cuts or needle pricks during pat-downs. Many wore Turtleskins. Rose preferred Friskmasters. ‘Did anybody find a glove?’ she asked.

‘No, ma’am,’ Gerber said.

Rebecca measured the distance between the toe marks. A smooth stone in just the right place had been pressed down and twisted, the dirt scrunched up around its perimeter. She picked it up. A fleashit speck of rain-washed blood had fallen on the tumbled-smooth surface. She palmed the stone, and then saw another drop of blood, unmistakable, on a pebble nested in a patch of sand. ‘Something here,’ she said. The young analysts joined her in the ditch. As they worked over the area, she pocketed the larger rock, unseen.

‘Could be a ground squirrel or a coyote,’ Gerber said with a sniff.

‘I’d like to be copied on any human DNA results.’

‘Of course.’ Gerber knelt beside her. ‘It’s a golden age of cooperation.’

Botnik walked beside Rose back to the Suburban. ‘Gerber’s a good guy. He won’t stand in our way if we need something. And don’t get me wrong. If Hiram Newsome shows an interest in inkjet printers, I’ll be there for you with bells on.’

‘Thanks,’ Rose said. ‘Has your Minitest been certified recently?’

‘Not in the last month,’ Botnik said.

‘Can I borrow a plastic bag?’

One of the young agents gave her a baggie. She pulled the rock from her pocket and slipped it into the baggie, inspecting it to make sure the blood speck was still there.

‘Jesus,’ Botnik said, and whapped the steering wheel with his hand. ‘This is just the kind of federal arrogance that’s killing us.’

‘They have blood evidence, we have blood evidence,’ Rose said, deadpan. ‘Pima County ME lost its board certification again last year. Arizona CID is backed up for days or even weeks. And you haven’t even primed your Minitest. What’s a poor girl to do?’

Botnik turned a fine ruddy shade. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’ve got it figured out. But you still have a problem. You still have to learn where the suspect was going. Maybe somebody around here can help. To that end, I’m hoping you’ll spread at least a little enlightenment.’

‘Thanks again,’ Rose said. ‘But we have reasons to keep it quiet.’

‘Quiet?’ Botnik chuckled. ‘This is the worst-kept secret in the FBI. It’s got something to do with Amerithrax. The only question I have is, what the hell’s the connection?’

Rose took a shallow breath.

‘I do crossword puzzles,’ she said. ‘Sometimes, when I can’t solve one right away, I put it aside. Some of my puzzles have been waiting for years.’

‘Secrecy is most of why we’re boots up in a pile of shit,’ Botnik said. ‘What if there’s another anthrax attack and you could have prevented it by sharing?’

Rose stared straight ahead.

‘Is there going to be another attack?’ Botnik asked.

She climbed into the truck. The WAGD in her pocket buzzed. No squeeee of alarm, just a little warning buzz: all done. ‘Keep the rest of the boxes sealed and make sure nobody pokes around the open ones. Take along a HAZMAT team. I’d like a thorough fingerprint check and PCR on all of them. If HAZMAT clears them, I’d like them quietly removed from state jurisdiction and impounded as federal terrorist evidence. Send them on to Frank Chao at Quantico.’

Botnik shrugged. ‘You got it.’ The two field agents climbed into the seats behind.

‘You’re investigating jammers, right?’ Rose asked.

‘We are,’ Botnik said.

‘What priority?’

‘Moderate.’

‘Push it higher. Let’s spread the theory that jammers might have killed Porter. And if you find our particular jammer, let me know.’

‘Anything to help.’

The sun was coming up. ‘Could we drive west for a few miles?’ Rose asked. ‘Slowly. Before we return to Tucson.’

‘I hear and obey,’ Botnik said, and salaamed lightly over the steering wheel. ‘Looking for something in particular?’

‘Just being thorough.’ She leaned her head back, mouth gaping, pulled down one eyelid with a finger, and deposited a drop of Visine. She treated the other eye, returned the Visine to her coat, and removed the marker-sized analyzer. Reading small print was becoming harder and harder. The narrow LCD panel flashed happy zeroes. No WAGD biohazards were on the printer or inside the box. No anthrax. She hadn’t really expected any. They wouldn’t use the printers and then pack them up and ship them. Nobody was that stupid—nobody still alive.

Half a mile down the road, she spotted something crumpled and black on the gravel shoulder. Botnik stopped to let her retrieve it.

‘Hatch Friskmaster, right hand,’ she said as she climbed back into the Suburban. Botnik pulled out another Baggie. She slipped it in and he sealed it.

The earnest agent sitting directly behind her looked impressed. He held up a Thermos. ‘Coffee?’

‘Christ, no thanks,’ she said briskly, her cheeks flushed. ‘I’d jump out of my skin.’

Her slate buzzed in her pocket and she jerked. Botnik lifted the corners of his lips. ‘Just like that,’ she said, then answered the slate.

‘Rebecca, it’s News.’ Hiram Newsome—News to friends and close associates—was Assistant Director of Training Division at Quantico. He had taught Rebecca most of what she knew and had long supported her work on this unfinished puzzle. ‘Tell Botnik to haul your ass back to Tucson. I’ve chartered you a jet to Seattle. Someone’s been ordering medical equipment they have no honest use for. I’ve told Griff you’re coming in. He’s irritated, of course.’

‘Erwin Griffin?’

‘The same. Play nice, Rebecca.’

‘Always,’ Rebecca said.