“So the program doesn’t work perfectly. You can keep working on it, refine it.”

“No, it works. Unlike some, I believe in my abilities.” He grinned at Xander. “Seriously, maybe we’re looking at this all wrong. Maybe Denon wasn’t the target.”

Xander came around to the back of Chalk’s chair. “Let me have a go.”

Chalk got up, fetched himself a Coke from the refrigerator. Xander took his spot, running through the program, searching for anything that might stand out. After ten minutes, he had to admit Chalk was right. There was nothing out of place, nothing that looked even remotely suspicious.

Xander leaned back in the chair and stretched. He needed fuel—caffeine, food, sleep. He grabbed himself a Coke and started making sandwiches for the crew. Chalk watched quietly, letting him think. After years together as Rangers, living in all corners of the world, there was no unnecessary chatter.

Finally, Xander turned, set a plate of sandwiches on the table, motioning for Chalk to dig in. He delivered a plate to the pool, left another on the table by Denon. Then he grabbed one for himself and in between bites ran through things with Chalk. “So if Denon wasn’t the target of the hit, who was? Or did we just stop a madman from going all bell tower on that tarmac?”

“We need to run Denon’s people through the system. None of them pulled a contract. Ergo, maybe one of them was the real target.”

“Let’s do that.”

Chalk smiled. “Already am. Program’s been running since you sat down. Should be about ready now. Of course, now that our target pool has expanded exponentially, we may find this has nothing to do with Denon at all.”

Xander thought of the bloodstain spreading down the concrete wall. “Don’t say that.”

Chalk had green eyes with yellow centers that made him look like a raptor. He trained those hawklike eyes on Xander now. “Xander, man, you did right. Don’t worry. You saved a life today, no matter what. Even if it wasn’t our principal, you saved a life.”

“We’ll see about that. Where’s this Senza guy from? Is there anything on him?”

Chalk sat back at the computer, pulled up a fresh screen. “He is Spanish, actually. Was. Worked under several names, so I don’t know which one is real, but his history says he was a product of their spec ops. GOE—Grupos de Operaciones Especiales. Mean motherfuckers. Remember that guy, Pablo somebody, who came through Herat with those LAG 40 grenade launchers? He was GOE.”

“I remember. He was posing as a translator. He was nuts. I didn’t know if he was transporting those weapons or was setting up to shoot them at us.” Another chunk of the sandwich disappeared. “So Senza had all the same training as we do.”

“Yeah. His mandatory was up, they cut him loose in early 2000 and he went private.”

“That’s a nice long career for a private hitter. Any paper on who he’d been working for? Did he discriminate?”

“Not really. He’d taken ten jobs in four countries in the past two years. That’s steady work, at a decent clip, too. You know how some of these guys are—they’ll disappear for years, only come out if the target is huge, meaningful. And some of them will take the smaller jobs to keep in practice. Senza fell into that category.”

“Someone like Denon is pretty meaningful.”

“He is. But let’s see who else might be of interest to the forces of evil.”

He tapped on the keyboard, and a list popped up—the names of Denon’s small group that traveled with him to the US on his secret trip. “I’ve put in all the names of everyone in Denon’s top echelons, from the staffers who traveled with him to the company’s C-suite, and I’ve got nothing. Bebbington, Everson and Heedles are clean.”

“Show me the files.”

Xander ran through them. “Well, there’s a ton more people in his company who could be a target.”

“But it doesn’t make sense, Mutant. We have to limit the target list to the people who knew about the trip. He kept it off the radar entirely. We should look at all the people he met with here in the States, too.”

Xander agreed. “Get the itinerary, let’s start marking off names, and see where we stand. I’m going to start at the beginning of the job and run through every contact made, from the pilots to the hotels, service and limos, everything external where there were strangers. You start running backgrounds on the people he was slated to see while he was here. Let’s run them down, and see who Denon’s doing business with who might be doing naughty things.”

“Roger that. On it.”

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Xander found what he was looking for. Or rather, an anomaly, which was enough to set his instincts on fire.

He was running the surveillance tapes from Teterboro, the first hour of the job, looking for anyone who might have been paying special attention to their principal’s landing. Denon had specifically requested to meet them as he exited the terminal, not a moment before.

They’d been running the perimeter. He distinctly remembered casing the warehouse, looking for unseen threats, just as he’d done when Denon was leaving. Xander hadn’t been looking at the plane. He’d had his back to it. Chalk had been inside the terminal scanning for problems there.

They’d missed it. Son of a bitch, they’d missed it.

On the tape, two females came down the steps of the private Gulfstream at Teterboro Friday night. Maureen Heedles, and a blonde he didn’t recognize. She looked neither right, nor left, but marched directly into the terminal, and out of sight of the camera Xander had on his shoulder.

She wasn’t listed on the manifest for the flight to London today. And she hadn’t been on the flight that left this morning. That he was one hundred percent sure about.

Denon had brought a woman into the country, and left her behind.

Chapter 31

FLETCHER CALLED HART back and got the name of the renters of Souleyret’s house on Capitol Hill—Michael Oread and Jared Lanter.

“They’re both Congressional staffers,” Hart said. “I called to talk to them, but neither man was at work today. I haven’t had a chance to follow up. Also, Robertson is under sail to find and isolate the vaccines.”

“Good. Good work, man. Where are we with the cameras around Cattafi’s house?”

“Nothing yet. We still haven’t been able to touch base with the neighbors. They must be out of town.”

“The cameras will have a brand name on them. Get someone up on a ladder, find out who makes them, call the company and give them the address. They’ll have an emergency contact for the owners.”

“That’s next on my extremely long list. Let me know if you find anything at Souleyret’s house.”

Fletch hung up with a bad feeling. Just something in his gut that told him things were all wrong, all off. How a simple case of domestic dispute had turned into an international intrigue and a possible bioterror attack in less than twelve hours was mind-boggling. There was no keeping this quiet; there were too many moving parts. He didn’t feel the need to inform Girabaldi, though. He was going to handle this his way.

They got in his car and headed toward Souleyret’s place. Sam was silent on the ride over, making notes in her round handwriting.

“Anything good coming?”

She shook her head “No. Nothing good. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the data we just saw. I keep hoping I’m wrong.”

“Funny, I was just thinking the exact same thing. Moving that info, smuggling it in, is one thing—bringing live diseases and tissue samples? It’s so risky. If Souleyret was working for us, for State, couldn’t she just send an email or pick up the phone and blow it wide-open? For that matter, leak it to the press? Why run the risk of allowing an epidemic on our shores, too?”

“There must have been a very compelling reason. And you can’t trust the press to work the information. Too much partisanship nowadays. It falls into the wrong hands, it gets swept under the rug, or blown into a different story, or starts an irretrievable panic. But yes, there are all sorts of ways to pass information, secure ways—interagency emails, diplomatic pouches, all that. She must have felt it was too important to chance, and I can understand why. There’s a group out there killing people, and I imagine they’ll do anything and everything in their power to keep it quiet.”