Dead or Alive

“Window,” Dominic said.

  “Got it.”

  Brian was at the threshold in three steps. He peeked around the corner and saw a man climbing through a window on the other side of the room. He fired. The 9-millimeter hollow-point slammed into the man’s hip. His leg collapsed beneath him, and he fell backward into the room. In his left hand was a pistol. Dominic stepped forward and double-tapped the man in the chest.

  “Clear.”

  “Clear.”

  The rest of the apartment consisted of a bathroom and a second bedroom, both off the short hall. Both rooms were empty, as were the closets. They found Bari’s second bodyguard in the bathtub, fully clothed, with a neat hole in the back of his head. They returned to the front room, which they realized was in fact a living room/kitchenette. Bari lay where they’d left him, face-first on the table, arms spread.

  “Christ,” Brian said. “What the fuck ...”

  In the short five minutes in which Bari’s visitors had worked on him, they’d managed to cut two fingers off his left hand.

  “Somebody green-lit this guy,” Dominic said.

  “Yeah. The question is why?”

  66

  WHATEVER HIS EFFECTIVENESS as a bureaucrat, one thing about Agong Nayoan became quickly apparent to Clark, Jack, and Chavez: As an intelligence operative, either the man was untrained in the ways of fieldcraft or he’d chosen to ignore the rules, and nowhere was this more acutely obvious than his choice of online passwords, which Gavin Biery cracked within hours of Clark and company leaving Nayoan’s home. The Web browser on Nayoan’s laptop had the normal array of bookmarks—from shopping sites to reference sites and everything in between—but he also maintained several online e-mail accounts, one at Google, one at Yahoo!, and one at Hotmail. Each mailbox contained dozens of messages, mostly from friends and family, it seemed, but also junk mail and spam, these heavily laden with banner images that Biery would be scanning for traces of stego.

  Nayoan was also an avid user of Google Maps, which Jack found heavily annotated with digital pushpins. Most of these turned out to be restaurants, cafés, or similar San Francisco hot spots within walking distance of both the embassy and his home. One pushpin, however, caught Jack’s attention, a private home in San Rafael, about fifteen miles north of the city across the Golden Gate Bridge.

  “What’s the pushpin called?” Clark asked.

  “Sinaga,” Jack replied.

  “Sounds like a last name.”

  “Checking,” Jack said, before Clark could make the suggestion. He had Biery on the phone a minute later. “Need you to scan Nayoan’s accounts for a name: Sinaga.”

  Biery was back ten minutes later. “Kersan Sinaga. Nayoan has written him seven checks in the last two years, ranging from five hundred to a couple thousand bucks. One of the check abstracts I pulled up at his bank’s website has a notation: ‘computer consultation.’ Here’s the interesting part, though: I ran his name through Immigration; they’ve got him flagged. He was supposed to show up for a hearing eight months ago and never showed. He’s also flagged on the watch list.”

  “Double whammy,” Chavez said. “Skipping an ICE hearing doesn’t get you a place on the list all by itself.”

  “No chance,” Clark agreed. “What else?”

  “He’s wanted by the Indonesian POLRI,” Biery replied, referring to the Polisi Negara Republik Indonesia. The Indonesian national police. “Seems your Kersan Sinaga is a top-notch forger. They’ve been looking for him for four years.”

  The drive north out of the city took thirty minutes. According to Jack’s own Google map, Sinaga lived on the eastern outskirts of San Rafael, in a sparsely populated mobile-home park. They drove through once, then circled back and parked a hundred yards north of Sinaga’s trailer, a double-wide surrounded by a rusted waist-high hurricane fence and hedges.

  “Ding, there’s a legal pad in my briefcase back there,” Clark said over his shoulder. “Grab it for me, will you?”

  Chavez handed it over. “Whatcha thinking?”

  “A little neighborhood survey. Be back in ten minutes.”

  Clark climbed out, and Jack and Chavez watched him walk down the lane to the nearest trailer, where he mounted the steps and knocked on the door. A woman appeared a few seconds later, and Clark chatted with her for thirty seconds before moving on to the next house, where he repeated the process until he reached Sinaga’s trailer. When he reappeared, he walked to three more trailers before walking back to the car and climbing in. He handed the legal pad to Jack. It was covered in names, addresses, and signatures.

  “Care to clue us in?” Jack said.

  “I told him I was trying to open a restaurant down the road and I needed five hundred signatures from nearby residents to apply for a liquor license. Sinaga’s not home. According to his neighbor, he works part-time at the Best Buy off one-oh-one. He gets off at two.”

  Chavez checked his watch. “An hour. Not enough time.”

  “We’ll wait for dark,” Clark said.

  “And then?” Jack asked.

  “We’re going to kidnap the sonofabitch.”

  Clark’s reasoning was sound. Nayoan rarely contacted Sinaga, and even then only by e-mail, so the man’s disappearance wasn’t likely to raise an alarm. Better still, if they worked the scam correctly, they might be able to parlay their electronic association into an information dump from Nayoan. Worst case, they would have a warm body who had, more than likely, forged documents for the URC, perhaps both here and overseas. Whether Gerry Hendley would like the idea of The Campus having custody of a URC stringer none of them knew.

  “Easier to ask forgiveness than permission,” Clark observed.

  They drove to the Best Buy and waited for Sinaga to emerge, then followed him to a nearby grocery store, then home. They waited thirty minutes, then Clark reprised his bar-owner role, this time taking the houses on the opposite side of the street before crossing over to Sinaga’s trailer. He was back five minutes later.

  “He’s alone. Playing Xbox and drinking beer. I didn’t see any feminine touches, so it’s a good bet he’s a bachelor,” Clark reported. “He’s got a dog, though, an old cocker spaniel. Didn’t bark until I knocked on the door.”

  They killed time until nightfall, then drove back to the trailer park and circled the block once. Sinaga’s car, a five-year-old Honda Civic, was parked under the carport awning, and lights showed in the trailer’s windows. A bare bulb cast the porch in white light. Clark doused the Taurus’s headlights and killed the engine, then scanned the legal pad.

  “His neighbor—the one that knew he was at work—is a guy named Hector. Looks a bit like you, Ding.”

  “Let me guess: I’m borrowing a cup of sugar.”

  “Yep. There’s no screen door, so he’ll have to open the door. When he does, you bulldoze him and I’ll grab the dog and put it in the bathroom. Jack, you go through the side gate and cover the back windows. Not much of a chance he’ll have time to get to them, but better safe than sorry.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t skulk around. Walk like you’ve got purpose. The neighbors were pretty friendly, so if somebody sees you, just wave or say hi like you belong. Let’s do it.”

  They got out and started down the street, chatting quietly and occasionally chuckling, a trio of residents walking back from somewhere. When they drew even with the trailer, Clark and Chavez turned toward it. Jack stepped into the shadows beside the gate and watched as Clark pressed himself against the wall beside the door and Chavez mounted the steps. Clark turned and nodded to Jack, who gently pushed open the gate and stepped into the yard. There wasn’t much grass, but there were plenty of weeds and brown spots and piles of dog crap. He reached the rear of the trailer and squatted down so he could see the length of the trailer. There were two windows, but one was too small for an adult; the window closest to him was the only exit.

  From the front, Jack heard Chavez’s knock, followed a few seconds later by a “Yeah, who’s there?”
br />   “Hector, from next door. Hey, man, my phone’s disconnected. Can I use yours for a second?”

  Footsteps clicked on the trailer’s floor. Hinges squeaked.

  “Hey!”

  A door slammed, followed by the pounding of footsteps. Jack looked up, on alert now. Shit . . . what . . .

  “Coming your way!” Clark called. “Back window!”

  Even as Clark said the words, the window slid open and a figure appeared, diving out headfirst. He landed with a grunt, then rolled over and jumped to his feet.

  Jack froze momentarily, then said, “Stop, right there!”

  Sinaga spun on him, head darting first left, then right. He charged Jack, and in the light filtering from the window Jack saw a glint of steel in Sinaga’s hand. Knife, some distant part of his brain told him. Then Sinaga was on him, knife slashing sideways. Jack backpedaled. Sinaga kept coming. Jack felt the fence railing slam into his back, then saw Sinaga bringing his arm around. He jerked his head sideways, felt an impact on his right shoulder. Slightly off balance by the wild swing, Sinaga stumbled sideways. Jack caught his arm, left hand on his wrist, and gave it a jerk, then wrapped his right arm around Sinaga’s neck, his larynx in the crook of Jack’s elbow. Sinaga bent his head forward, then butted backward. Jack sensed it coming but was able to only tilt his face sideways. The back of Sinaga’s head slammed into Jack’s cheek-bone. Pain burst behind Jack’s eyes. Sinaga flailed, trying to free himself, and slammed Jack back against the fence again, but losing his own footing in the process. Legs splayed out before him, Sinaga dropped straight down and landed on his butt. Jack held on, felt himself tipping forward over Sinaga’s head. Don’t let go, don’t let go. . . . Arm still wrapped around Sinaga’s throat, Jack somersaulted. He heard a muffled crunch-pop. He landed in a heap, rolled sideways, sure Sinaga would be on him.

  “Jack!” Chavez’s voice. Ding appeared, running through the gate. Without breaking stride, he kicked the knife away from Sinaga’s hand. He wasn’t moving. His head was cocked strangely to one side. His eyes blinked several times, but they were fixed, staring. His right arm was jerking, rapping softly on the ground.

  “Christ ...” Jack whispered. “Christ almighty.”

  Clark ran through the gate, stopped short, then knelt down beside Sinaga. “His neck’s broken. He’s gone. Jack, you okay?”

  Jack couldn’t take his eyes off Sinaga. As he watched, the man’s arm stopped twitching.

  Clark said, “Jack, wake up. You okay?”

  Jack nodded.

  “Ding, get him inside. Quick.”

  Once inside the trailer, Ding sat Jack on the couch, then walked down the hall to the bedroom and helped Clark manhandle Sinaga’s body back through the window. They met back in the front room. From the bathroom, the cocker was barking.

  “Nothing moving outside,” Clark reported, shutting the front door. “Ding, check the fridge, see if a little food’ll quiet down Fido.”

  “Got it.”

  Clark stepped over to Jack. “You’re bleeding.”

  “Huh?”

  Clark pointed at Jack’s right shoulder. The material of his shirt was dark with blood. “Take off your shirt.” Jack did so, revealing a two-inch gash on his collarbone at the base of his throat. Blood trickled down his chest.

  “Huh,” Jack mumbled. “Didn’t know. Felt something hit my shoulder, but I didn’t realize.”

  “An inch or two higher and you’d be done, Jack. Put your thumb on it. Hey, Ding, see if Sinaga’s got some superglue.”

  From the kitchen came sounds of drawers opening and closing, then Chavez walked out and tossed a tube to Clark, who handed it to Jack. “Put a line of that in the cut.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. Better than stitches. Do it.”

  Jack tried, but his hands were shaking. He looked at them. “Sorry.”

  “Just adrenaline, mano,” Chavez said, taking the tube. “Don’t sweat it.”

  “He’s really dead?” Jack asked Clark.

  Clark nodded.

  “Shit. We needed him alive.”

  “His choice, Jack, not yours. You can feel bad about it if you want. That’s natural. But don’t forget: He was trying to open your throat.”

  “Yeah, I guess. I don’t know.”

  Chavez said, “Don’t overthink it. You’re alive; he’s dead. Would you rather have it the other way around?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “Then chalk it up as a win and move on.” Chavez capped the superglue tube, stood up.

  “Just like that? Move on?”

  “Might take a little time to process it,” Clark replied. “But if you can’t, you need to stick to your desk.”

  “Jesus, John.”

  “If you carry this dirtbag around in your head, it’s going to get you or somebody else killed. I guarantee it. This job isn’t for everyone, Jack. There’s no shame in that. Better you figure that out now than later.”

  Jack exhaled, rubbed his forehead. “Okay.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “Okay, I’ll think about it.” Clark smiled at this. “What?” Jack asked.

  “That was the right answer. You just killed a man. I’d be worried if you didn’t have a little soul-searching to do.”

  From the kitchen, Ding called, “Got something, John.”

  Three days after it left on a charter flight from Dubai, the device touched down at Vancouver International Airport in British Columbia. Having landed the day before, Musa was waiting for the flight. His business card and letter cleared him into the customs warehouse, where he met the inspector.

  “Silvio Manfredi,” Musa introduced himself, handing over his documentation.

  “Thanks. Phil Nolan. Your package is over here.”

  They walked to a nearby pallet on which the plastic crate sat.

  Neither the card nor the letterhead had been difficult to create using Photoshop and a high-end desktop publishing program. Of course, the inspector would care little about a letter from the University of Calgary’s veterinary medicine department chair, but the psychological effect couldn’t be ignored. The inspector was dealing with a fellow citizen and a renowned Canadian university.

  What Musa’s fourteen months of study had taught him was that customs inspectors the world over were overworked and underpaid, and lived by checklists and forms. For this particular type of shipment—radioactive materials—the inspector would be concerned with three forms of documentation: an invoice and bill of lading for the device; the stamps and seals from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) agent in Dubai, stating the origin of the shipment; and the myriad paperwork demanded by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Transport Canada, the Nuclear Substances and Radiation Devices license, the Canadian Nuclear Substances Act, and the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act. While none of these documents had proven difficult to reproduce, the intelligence groundwork Musa and his men had conducted had alone taken eight months.

  “So what is it?” the customs inspector asked.

  “It’s called a PXP-40HF portable equine imager.”

  “Come again?”

  Musa chuckled. “I know. Quite a mouthful. It’s a portable X-ray machine for horses. A friend of the university president lives in Dubai. Has this prized Arabian stallion worth more than either of us will make in a lifetime. Horse got sick, friend complains to president, the university puts the machine on loan.”

  The inspector shook his head. “Must be nice. Did the horse make it?”

  “Yes. Get this: It was just colic. Spent a week over there babysitting an X-ray machine because the guy’s vet didn’t recognize a simple case of indigestion.”

  “Well, at least you got some sun. Okay ...” the inspector said, flipping through the paperwork. “I need radioisotope code, activity level, dose rate, contamination limits. ...”

  “Page four. And page nine. Pretty low across the board.”

  “Yeah, okay, I see it. So how dangerous is this thi
ng?”

  “Pretty harmless unless you manage to take a couple hundred X-rays of your balls. Then you’d have problems.”

  The inspector laughed at this. “Not exactly a WMD, is it?”

  Musa shrugged. “Rules are rules. Better to be a little overcautious than the opposite, I suppose.”

  “Yeah. Hey, how come they didn’t fly you straight into Calgary?”

  “Couldn’t get a flight in there until Wednesday. Thought it’d be easier to come in here and rent a car. With luck, I’ll be home before nightfall.”

  The inspector signed where he needed to sign and affixed adhesive seals on the crate. He had Musa countersign in the appropriate places, gave the paperwork once last glance, then handed it back. “You’re good to go.”

  “My rental car is in the parking lot. ...”

  “Just pull up to the gate. I’ll tell them to wave you through.”

  Musa shook his hand. “Thanks.”

  “Sure thing. Travel safe.”

  67

  AFTER STAUNCHING the blood pulsing from Bari’s severed fingers, they sat him in a chair in the living room and duct-taped his feet to the legs. The leader of the group they duct-taped to the trestle table. Both men were still unconscious. Finally, they policed up the bodies and piled them into the bathtub, atop Bari’s second bodyguard.

  “I’m going to take a walk around the block,” Dominic said. “See if the natives are restless. Don’t think we attracted any attention, but ...”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Be back in five.”

  Brian sat in the living room, studying their captives and doing a mental postmortem of their takedown. Pretty damned good job, he thought. Dominic had always been good with a gun, and a pro at Hogan’s Alley, but this had been the first time they’d really gotten into the shit together. Sure, there’d been that mall thing, but that wasn’t quite the same, was it? Here they’d taken on genuine URC bad boys on their home turf. Not really accustomed to taking prisoners, though; he’d have to change mental gears on that point. The butt of the Browning had laid both mutts out, sure enough, but not very efficiently. Maybe a lead-and-leather sap might do the trick. Have to look into that.