Jarvis shifted in his seat.
‘Ethan Warner saved the then Senator Isaiah Black’s life, sir, as did Nicola Lopez, who was forced into her actions after her own superior officer was arrested for fraud, corruption and the homicide of her partner. He’s currently serving life in a New Jersey penitentiary. Warner and Lopez are perfect for this kind of work. They’re incorruptible.’
Mitchell shook his head, clearly not convinced.
‘As I understand it, both parties are not at all incorruptible. Ethan Warner has a reputation as a live wire and Nicola Lopez has become known for several indiscretions, to which you appear to have turned a blind eye.’
‘In addition,’ Wolfe said before Jarvis could respond, ‘they’re not trained in dealing with infectious diseases, whereas doing so is my specialty. It is imperative that this investigation be handed over to USAMRIID, at least until we can figure out whether there’s anything to be concerned about. If not, your NCMI and investigators can carry on as they were.’
‘And risk letting the case go cold?’ Jarvis challenged. ‘This is a criminal investigation being conducted with the support of the state police, not an infectious outbreak. Putting it on hold and handing jurisdiction to a military outfit isn’t going to solve the abduction case.’
Wolfe was about to retort when Mitchell raised his hands, silencing them.
‘Doug, how long is it before your team finds the missing doctor?’
‘Days,’ Jarvis promised with a conviction he didn’t feel. ‘They’re already chasing several leads.’
Mitchell nodded.
‘Then there’s no good reason not to let USAMRIID into Santa Fe to work alongside Warner and Lopez.’
Wolfe snorted incredulously.
‘This is ridiculous. We could have a major infectious outbreak here, even a biological agent, and you want to leave an ex-soldier and a cop wandering about—’
‘If it were an infectious agent,’ Mitchell interrupted him, ‘then we would expect others to have become infected. They have not.’
‘Not yet,’ Wolfe snapped. ‘And what if they do? If we don’t keep this contained, both physically and from the media, we could have national panic on our hands.’
‘Not if your people work together,’ Mitchell pointed out. ‘The more people we have on this case, the sooner it can be resolved. There’s no need to involve NCMI while Warner and Lopez are already on the scene, if they’re as competent as you say they are,’ Mitchell said, fielding Jarvis’s protesting stare. ‘Given the potentially sensitive nature of this case, can your people be trusted to finish this without arousing unwanted interest?’
Cornered by his own defense of Warner and Lopez, Doug Jarvis straightened his tie and lifted his chin.
‘Believe me, there are no two better people for the job. Discretion, sir, is Ethan Warner’s watchword. You won’t even know he’s there.’
23
‘Fire in the hole!’
Ethan Warner sprinted frantically out of the Hilary Falls apartment block to a row of squad cars and a pair of fire trucks, their beacons flashing as a police helicopter thundered overhead. The exchange of gunfire in the center of Santa Fe had attracted every squad car for miles. He just had time to see Lopez and Zamora diving for cover behind the vehicles as the sky seemed to split over his head. Ethan threw himself down and rolled across the asphalt as the third-story apartment exploded, an expanding fireball of oily black smoke and tongues of flame blasting shattered glass to fall like a hailstorm across the lot. He shielded his head with his arms as the shockwave plowed into him, a blast of hot air followed by metallic thumps as chunks of masonry and brickwork slammed into the nearby squad cars.
The blast subsided as flaming fragments of furniture, paper and window frames fluttered down around Ethan. Ethan got to his feet, his ears ringing from the explosion as fire crews dashed past him with hoses, aiming them up at the burning apartment and spraying thick streams of white water into the crackling flames.
‘You okay?’
Lopez appeared behind him, her face a mask of concern as she began tapping him down, searching for breaks or abrasions.
‘I’m good, just about.’
Zamora walked up to him, holding his injured shoulder.
‘Jesus Christ, it’s like a war zone down here. You did good, Ethan. What the hell had they done in there? I could smell fuel.’
‘Yeah,’ Ethan said. ‘They probably frayed the gas line behind the stove to start the leak.’
‘Where was the accelerant?’
‘Cat-litter tray,’ Ethan said.
‘How do you know?’ Lopez asked.
‘No cat, and no cat-flap either,’ Ethan explained. ‘It’s an old Boy Scout trick. Litter burns well when it’s doused in fuel and doesn’t leave much of a trace of anything. Investigators would have assumed that the gas leak caused the blast on its own, not arsonists.’
Lopez looked up at the apartment and the thick smoke billowing from the windows.
‘Neat trick,’ she said. ‘Nasty too.’
‘Those guys were heavily armed and they knew how to shoot straight,’ Ethan said to her. ‘Probably ex-soldiers. Somebody really doesn’t want Tyler Willis’s little secret getting out. I saw a car pull away with two men in it who seemed very interested in what we were doing. They were the same guys we saw come out of the elevator, the ones with the weird eyes.’
‘I remember them,’ Lopez said, turning to Zamora. ‘Can we find their vehicle?’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Zamora said. ‘But if they’re as professional as we think they are, it’s doubtful we’ll catch up to them now.’
Ethan nodded.
‘They’ll have swapped vehicles, probably be on their way out of the county and there’s too much border to track their movements.’
‘We need another line of inquiry here,’ Lopez said, looking at the smoldering apartment. ‘Wherever Willis is, somebody’s trying to prevent us from finding him. Why don’t we try another tack?’
‘Jeb Oppenheimer,’ Ethan said.
‘Saffron led us here, remember?’ Lopez pointed out. ‘We’ve only got her word about her grandfather, and to tell you the truth I don’t like her much.’
‘No shit?’
‘Look,’ she said, ‘Saffron is an eco-warrior who’s already tried to kill you once. She then tips us off about this apartment so she can make a break for it. When we get here we damn near get blown to pieces. You see a picture developing?’
Ethan sighed, looking up at the apartment.
‘I just don’t see Saffron as a killer,’ he said. ‘There’s more to her than that.’
‘Yeah,’ Lopez snorted, ‘and I’m sure Adolf Hitler’s ma reckoned he was just misunderstood.’
Zamora spoke up from beside them.
‘There’s a lot more to Saffron Oppenheimer than we thought,’ he said, gesturing with a jab of his thumb behind them. ‘I did a search for her in our database, new gear we’ve got that’s linked to the FBI’s records. Turns out that Saffron was up for culpable homicide five years ago during an attack on a laboratory in Utah.’
Ethan winced as Lopez turned to the officer.
‘Go on,’ she said, folding her arms and raising an eyebrow in Ethan’s direction.
‘Saffron was part of an activist movement that tried to blow up a vivisection laboratory. The attack went wrong, one of the activists died and all the accomplices were arrested. Turns out the attack destroyed the closed-circuit cameras monitoring the labs, so all the evidence was circumstantial. All the activists blamed each other, the police couldn’t bring them to trial and lawyers argued that the dead activist had only himself to blame. As he had been estranged from his family for over a decade, no charges were brought and the case collapsed.’