CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY (Chapter 1.)
11:49 P.M., EDT, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The '07 Civic Sun cruised slowly through the deserted parking deck, staying carefully within the chem-glow drive lines. Silently it rounded the corner and rolled down the ramp to the lowest level, then stopped in front of a new Corvette Electro-T, which was parked facing the wall.
The Sun's tinted windows concealed its occupants until the passenger side opened. A brief flash from the dome light revealed two figures, a man behind the wheel and a tall, slender woman, who slipped out and quickly closed the door. Without a word to her companion, she walked around the Corvette, checking the interior, then the license plates.
Satisfied, she signaled him to drive on. Over the barely perceptible hum of the electric engine, her footsteps echoed on the concrete as the small rental car moved toward the opposite end of the deck and parked. In a brisk, athletic stride, she approached the elevator a dozen yards distant and melded into the shadows to the left of the doors. She checked her watch and prepared to wait.
Minutes passed. She did not move. Her vigil was rewarded by the low growl of elevator cables. She shifted position ever so slightly onto the balls of her feet. The doors whooshed open, revealing a thickset man carrying an attach case. He glanced left and right, then stepped hurriedly from the elevator.
She raised her weapon and took aim. He caught the motion from the corner of his eye and whirled, reaching inside his jacket. The only sound breaking the silence was a soft pop from her small automatic. A tiny hole no bigger than the tip of her little finger appeared in the middle of the man's forehead. His temples and eyeballs bulged grotesquely. Then, every bone in his body seemed to dissolve as he crumpled.
Glancing around the dimly lit deck, the woman walked over to her victim and knelt beside his body. When she rolled the corpse onto its back, a thin trickle of blood oozed from its ear, pooling on the concrete. Eyes stared blankly into space. Ignoring the slack face of death, she pulled the attach case from beneath the body. The Sun approached noiselessly as she stood up. She tossed the case inside and slid into the passenger seat.
"You moved too soon. He caught you in peripheral," her companion said as he drove up the ramp.
"I know," she replied in a tight voice.
Glancing at her profile he grunted. "You okay?"
She sucked in a deep breath. "No." The car circled up the ramp three more levels. As he slowed to make the final turn, she swung her door open and was violently sick on the concrete floor. Raising her head immediately, she slammed the door and said, "Go!"
He anticipated the command, relieved to see a faint bit of color returning to her face. "The first one is always bad," he said.
Fishing a texture wipe from her pocket, she scrubbed at her mouth, then replied, "Yes."
"It'll get easier after a few more."
She forced aside the image of that perfectly centered red dot just above those dead eyes. "God, I hope not."
THREE YEARS LATER
2:12 A.M., EDT, TUESDAY, JUNE 16
ALEXANDRIA, VA.
He was running flat out, his chest on fire as if someone were tightening a piano wire around it. Sharp, stinging pain lanced through his lungs as he gulped enough air to yell, "Stop! FBI!" Without breaking stride, he closed the distance between himself and the two men he was chasing down the narrow street.
In the darkness, patches of light flashed between the buildings, black-and-white distortions, like images from an old twentieth-century cinema reel. The suspects' flight stopped abruptly when the car waiting for them at the curb peeled away before they reached it. As they turned, he tried to stop and level his weapon but was not quick enough.
They caught him limned in a sliver of dirty yellow light. The first slug spun him around, cutting a shallow furrow across his ribs as it slammed him against a rough brick wall. He gritted his teeth and raised his SIG-Sauer, squeezing off a shot, but the report was drowned out by the thunder of the second man's MACH10. He felt the solid thunk of metal ripping into his flesh. Chest. Thigh. Knee. The hits registered in his brain as he slid slowly down the wall. Someone screamed his name.
Sirens wailed in the distance. Everything faded to black but his knee still hurt like a bitch. If only the damn sirens would stop ringing. Ringing. He bolted upright into a sitting position. Drenched in sweat, he frantically ran his hands over his chest, down his left leg to stanch the bleeding. But there was no blood, only hot, sweaty flesh and the knotted lumps of healed scar tissue.
His knee still throbbed evilly as he swung his legs over the side of the bed and fumbled for the phone jangling on the nightstand. Running his fingers through his hair, he squinted at the clock. Two twenty-seven a.m. Taking a deep breath, he growled into the receiver, "Delgado. This better be good."
Elliott Delgado exited the 495 Beltway and turned west onto Braddock, glancing into his rearview vid screen at the nearly deserted highway behind him. If I was still with the Bureau, I'd have a tail scanner tracking any car making three successive turns with me. He consoled himself with the thought that he had been allowed to keep the Buick Electra-TE. The combination turbine-electrical engine had a specially designed third mode--a turboelectric flash drive allowing the Buick to go 190 kilometers per hour, small enough compensation for the titanium pins in his knee.
He rubbed the old injury as he pulled into the left-turn lane. Affluent suburban developments sprawled between dense stands of sugar pines. A few lights winked from distant windows, but at 3:15 a.m. the densely populated area adjacent to Accotink Park slumbered. The residents rested in the assurance that they were a safe thirty klics away from the urban war zone of central D.C.
Rival gangs of Elevator operators fought over the city. These El-Ops sold the street drug of choice, Elevator, a highly unstable combination of cocaine and the old nonspecific impotence drug sildenafil citrate, commonly known as Viagra, which sent the coke-laden blood surging up the carotid arteries to the brain with the speed of an elevator.
Del turned onto Danbury Forest and followed the winding road. What would he learn at this bizarre rendezvous? Cal Putnam had told him to take the back way into King's Park. His ex-boss knew he and Diana had lived in this old northern-Virginia development before their divorce.
Putnam had been the mentor who'd trained him, handpicked him for the most challenging assignments, and gone to the wall for him every time he'd been called on the carpet by punctilious politicians inside the Bureau. Diana had accused him of caring more for "that crotchety, foulmouthed old Okie" than he did for his own wife. She was probably right. God knew he'd spent more time with Cal than with her. By the time he was finished with hospitals, Putnam had been promoted to ADIC, assistant director in charge, and Delgado had climbed into a bottle.
Whiskey under the bridge as Cal would say, he thought with a laugh, recalling this stretch of road and the jogger's path across the bridge to the marina.
A good choice for cover. It would be nearly impossible for anyone to follow them here. A tail would stand out like a Vegas stripper in the National Cathedral. He pulled off the road and made a U-turn, then parked the Buick in the sheltering shadows of a big dogwood. After remaining in the car for several moments, watching for anyone who might follow him, he slipped out and climbed over the metal guardrail. The descent down the steep hillside was made more difficult by dense foliage and darkness, but he found the wide dirt pathway.
Tidewater in July was hot and fecund, infested with insects. Cicadas sang and mosquitoes hummed counterpoint between bites on his neck and arms. He'd remembered his .50-caliber Smith & Wesson but forgot to take a Buggone pill. A full moon silvered the treetops high overhead as he stopped to get his bearings. The gravel path was rutted, filled with joggers and cyclists during daylight hours, but now deserted. It twisted deep inside the park. Mentally he marked off the distance to the bridge.
Too damn far. The slight limp grew more pronounced with every kilometer. He remembered when he had run this course with ease every morning. But that was over seven years ago.
Getting out of shape, old man.
The sound of bubbling water grew louder as he neared the bridge over Accotink Creek. Then he saw a figure materialize out of the darkness on the other side of the rusty iron structure. He paused warily in the darkness until a familiar voice spoke.
"No need to play hide-'n'-seek. I been here for over half an hour. If I wasn't followed, you weren't."
Cal Putnam's nasal Oklahoma twang was unmistakable. Thinning gray hair and the leathery seams in his round face betrayed every one of his sixty-three years. He had shrewd blue eyes, a stubborn, pointed chin, and one hell of an attitude. Del had always liked working for a man who cut through the bureaucratic bullshit.
Delgado stood half a head taller than Putnam, whose slouched shoulders and paunch were the badge of a Washington bureaucrat chained to a desk. The old man was career FBI, working his way up to SAC in Oklahoma City before his thirtieth birthday. Now he was their number two man in Washington, the ADIC.
"What the hell's going on, Cal? I don't hear squat from you for five years, then this middle-of-the-night intrigue."
Putnam kicked a rock, then looked up at Delgado. "Don't piss in my hip pocket, Del. I'm not the only one up to my ass in alligators. You fly around more than Chuck Yeager ever did. But I hear you're one bitchin' reporter, ole son. Won a Pulitzer a couple of years back, didn't you?"
"You never ask a question you don't already know the answer to, Cal. And you didn't call me out here in the middle of the night to discuss my journalistic triumphs." Del leaned against the wooden rail of the bridge, taking the weight off his bum knee.
Putnam shrugged. "Nope on both counts. Mind if I indulge?" He pulled an antique meerschaum and a well-crumpled bag of tobacco from his jacket pocket.
"Fine by me. The stink will keep the insects away." Delgado knew the old man took his own sweet time getting to a point.
Putnam methodically tamped the shredded brown leaves into the bowl and lit the pipe, then took several experimental draws before nodding with satisfaction. He eyed Delgado's fingers massaging his bent knee and said, "Still dealin' you fits after three surgeries. Doctors could fuck up a rainstorm."
"I can walk. My pelvis rotates and I can even throw a softball for my kid again. Considering I got a full disability retirement from the Bureau five years ago, I'm not doing too bad."
"Damn shame those punks were able to do this to you. Maybe BISC has the right idea--no 'Stop, police,' no reading them their rights. Just a quick clean bullet in the brain."
"Judge, jury, and executioner all rolled up in the Bureau of Illegal Substance Control. I never liked it, Cal. Still don't."
"Hoped you'd still feel that way." Cal's chuckle was low and raspy.
"Does this have something to do with BISC--or the Bureau?"
"The Bureau, BISC, the Colombians, hell, ole son, the whole damn shootin' match. I lost two men in the last twenty-four hours. One in San Diego, one here in D.C. Both hit quick and clean. Both shot in the back of the head with a needle gun..." He puffed on his pipe, letting the words sink in.
"BISC isn't in the habit of losing those guns. Any rumor on the street about the bad guys finding a source for them?"
"I think the bad guys already have a source--some top-secret defense contractor, whoever the fuck supplies them to BISC."
"You're saying BISC terminated two FBI agents?" Delgado was stunned. "Why?"
"We've been hearing rumors on the street for months about BISC going after the boys from Bogot. And to sweeten the pot, the Pentagon may be working with BISC."
Del whistled low. "The Cartel owns South America and most of Mexico. Attacking them would make the Second Iraqi War look like a lovers' spat."
"Yeah, if any of their nukes got through, California would really glow after dark," Cal agreed grimly. "Those agents were both investigating the situation. Then..." Phitt. The rasping scrape of his wooden match made the point as he relit his pipe. "They ended up dead. No one but the highest-ranking personnel in the Bureau knew what my men were doing. I assigned Nuez and Crosby because they were the best."
Del remembered both agents, seasoned veterans. Not easy men to kill. "You think there's a leak in the Bureau?"
Cal nodded. "Both BISC and the brass asses have been nursing an itch to expand the war on drugs beyond our borders ever since the Slaughter. I think after years of BISC and the Bureau hating each other's guts, somebody in my command has gotten in bed with their fucking Tribunal and the Pentagon."
"You can't use normal channels to investigate for fear of tipping off a mole."
"Shit, it might be Drescher himself. Slippery bastard could hold his own in a pond full of eels." Cal hated the director, a political appointee with no experience in law enforcement.
"What about going directly to the president?"
"Wade Samson's a real hard-nosed son of a bitch. I haven't got the evidence to prove my suspicions--just a couple of dead agents killed by needle guns. I need more. Look, you won that Pulitzer for a story about an innocent man BISC canceled in Atlanta. You're a top-notch investigative reporter. You have due bills out all over."
"Hell, so do you, Cal."
"Yup. And I'm calling one in now, ole son."
On the drive back into Alexandria, Elliott Delgado thought about his conversation with Cal. Had he been crazy, agreeing to help? Sure thing. Maybe he'd never gotten over being an agent. He grinned as he turned into the underground parking facility of his Pitt Street condo. Maybe he just wanted another Pulitzer.
Either way, the rush of adrenaline was an addiction. Who needed Elevator to get high? He'd always had his work. That was both blessing and curse. Work sustained him when he was alone. But the reason he was alone was work. For the first couple of years of their marriage, Diana had tried to understand. But he had never been around when she or Mike needed him.
"It's over and done," he muttered to himself as he pulled the Buick into its slot and touched the sensor that set the security system for the custom automobile.
Del entered the elevator and fumbled for the coded ID card, which was the old building's pass at security. His apartment security was not much better than the building's, since he'd never bothered to have the door locks keyed into his computer, a small detail he kept meaning to accomplish but never had. Preoccupied by the information Cal had given him, he ignored the clutter in the living room and headed straight to the computer in his office. He fed the half-dollar-sized disc Cal had given him into the drive and gave his voice command to activate.
Data came up on the screen after a few twitches and a blip of protest. Another thing he kept intending to do was get a new machine. Pulling a cold Superior cerveza from the wall fridge, he zipped the plasti-tab and took a long pull as his eyes narrowed on the material. The text began with crime-scene photos of both terminations.
Poor devils never knew what hit them. He enlarged the screen to view Crosby's corpse. The barely visible point of entry was in the back of the head. The small, narrow missile from a needle gun penetrated only animal tissue, but once inside it vaporized, creating a wound the size of a golf ball, causing the eyeballs and even the skull to bulge out.
Instantaneous destruction. Surgical precision. There were no ricochets, no pass-throughs, no way for an innocent bystander to be hit unless the BISC shooter was a lousy shot, which never happened, or if the agent chose an innocent victim. Alarmingly, that occurred more often than politicians inside the Beltway would admit.
There was nothing more obscene than a body collapsed in death, boneless, vulnerable. Police photos revealed nothing of value to Del. Crosby was hit inside his own garage in a modest Maryland suburb. No one else was at home. Divorce. Delgado was certain it was an occupational hazard for Bureau members. Nuez had been taken out in a shopping mall parking lot.
Del scrolled for the inventory of personal belongings. Both bodies had been picked clean as a pig carcass in a piranha tank. Not so much as a texture wipe was left in either man's clothing. If Crosby or Nuez had been carrying any useful evidence, the BISC agents had removed it.
No witnesses to either termination. Sometimes there were. BISC agents liked anonymity but were occasionally forced to take out a drug dealer in front of bystanders. Since they were licensed to kill by act of Congress, the police had no jurisdiction.
"But these shoots weren't righteous," he muttered, taking another swallow of beer. Of course, he knew no rational being could finger a BISC agent even if one shot the pope. Hell, they had their fingerprints removed. They were shrouded in secrecy, feared. "What civilian would want to piss them off?"
Del scrolled through the day logs of the two men. Crosby had a scrawled "G. Goodacre, noon" under yesterday's date. The name was probably a code of some sort. Slim pickings but the only lead on Crosby he could glean from the disc. He instructed his computer program's search engines to locate any G. Goodacres.
Who the hell are you? He pulled another beer from the fridge and opened it. Since his bout with the bottle, beer and wine with dinner were all he allowed himself to drink. Two was his limit.
Shortly, the screen pinged, filled with a dozen entries. He scanned them. Mostly obscure, but then one caught his eye--Glenna Goodacre, an American sculptor, whose most famous work was the Women's Vietnam Memorial, completed in 1993.
As per Bureau procedure, he pulled the disc from the A drive and destroyed it.
A rendezvous site? Tomorrow he might find out.
CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY Copyright 2005 by Alexa Hunt
