Kneeling to insert the two-pronged plug at the other end into a wall socket, he asked Rapada, “Do you have any idea how many improvised explosive devices are recovered intact by bomb squads because the bomb makers fail to take into account a problem known to any child with a rechargeable electronic toy?”
“So this is actually a bomb?” Rapada said, as if only curious.
Canning chuckled. “I didn’t think that’d get past you.”
Rapada’s worst fears had been confirmed. Play it cool, he told himself. Get to the bottom of this and stop the bastard.
“Is it for al-Qaeda?” he asked. A guess, but wrong guesses prompted corrections from arrogant types like Canning.
“I’m glad you don’t know.” Canning stood up. “With the blogger and his girlfriend on the sidelines now, you were the only loose end.” He drew a long, integrally sound-suppressed pistol from his toolbox.
But not before Rapada freed the CIA-issued Sig Sauer P229 from his waistband. He’d taken the gun from the office safe earlier for exactly this contingency, finding ten .40 S&W rounds in the magazine, another in the chamber. He pointed it at Canning and pulled the trigger. The result was a tinny click. But nothing more.
What the hell?
Rapada reflexively racked the slide — ejecting a round — and fired again.
Another click.
Had the firing pin been filed down so it couldn’t reach the primer?
“It wasn’t really the CIA who issued that gun,” Canning said, aiming one of his own.
47
Two Deputy U.S. Marshals prodded Thornton to the back row of a DC-9, one of the “Con Air” fleet. He was dropped into the middle seat, aggravating his back, which stung from “accidental” elbows. Kidney shots, as the marines at the embassy surely knew, leave no marks. He was now one of the 1,000 passengers the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System transferred every day between judicial districts, correctional facilities, and foreign countries. His hands were held in front of him by signature U.S. Marshals Service cuffs, custom-forged from high-strength stainless steel and overmolded with ordnance-grade black polymer. His ankles sported a matching pair, with the two sets connected by high-tensile chain strong enough for use in towing a semi. As the marshals took seats to either side of him, Thornton saw that each man carried a U.S. Marshals Service standard Glock 23 and a Taser X26, which delivered nineteen 100-microcoulomb pulses per second of incentive for prisoners to cooperate.
Another pair of marshals deposited Mallery into the flying paddy wagon’s front row. Thornton saw little more than that she was wearing an overly starched orange jumpsuit, like his own. This was his first glimpse of her since the marines placed him in the musty subterranean chamber labeled BREAK ROOM on a door that locked from the outside — U.S. embassies and consulates were officially prohibited from having designated detention facilities since neither the State Department nor the CIA had the legal authority to detain anyone. He could only hope that she hadn’t been harmed.
The DC-9 soon jumped from the Grantley Adams International Airport runway and into the night sky. Thornton watched Bridgetown’s lights grow smaller and smaller. He wouldn’t have guessed he’d be sorry to see Barbados go, but without so much as a mouse pad of evidence from SofTec, he had only his version of the story, and no more proof of the existence of Littlebird than of Bigfoot. What he did have: two charges of first-degree homicide at the U.S. embassy and a bevy of additional criminal charges in Bridgetown. To face them, he had put in a call to the ideal lawyer for this case. Mallery certainly had potent legal representation — the two of them had been separated immediately after the SCIF incident, so they hadn’t been able to coordinate strategies. Unfortunately Thornton’s call had yet to be returned, and it was doubtful prisoners had in-flight telephone privileges.
He might as well sleep, he decided, while he had the chance.
He was out in a second. Two thousand sixty-five miles later, he woke to the landing gear punching a Reagan Airport runway that was delineated from darkness by the first hint of sunrise.
Within seconds of arrival at the terminal, Mallery was led off the plane. There was no sign of her when Thornton reached the tarmac. He was stuffed into the backseat of a black Lincoln Navigator that was parked by the tail of the jet.
A short drive ended at the loading dock of the towering U.S. Marshals Service headquarters in Crystal City. Across the Potomac, Washington shimmered in a glossy dawn that intensified the cold darkness of the underground corridor into which he was propelled, his cuffs slicing his shins as he struggled to keep pace with his handlers, each gripping one of his elbows.
He was locked in a room that was underlit despite a quartet of fluorescent rings on the ceiling. The walls were paneled with dingy powder blue fiberglass. Musseridge sat behind a plain wooden desk, his right hand on his holster.
“Please take a seat,” he said with a cordiality Thornton attributed to the presence of a recording device.
Thornton clanked over and lowered himself onto the bridge chair facing the desk.
“Why did you poison Special Agent Lamont?” Musseridge asked.
Thornton still hadn’t heard from his lawyer, and he knew it was foolish to say anything without an attorney present. On the other hand, if the Littlebird operation’s reach included a CIA base chief, he might sorely need Musseridge on his side.
“I have a question for you,” Thornton said.
Musseridge folded his arms. “That’s not how this works.”
“If I had had any intention of harming Agent Lamont, why would I have waited until we were locked into an SCIF with a CIA officer at the table and two armed marine guards standing outside?”
Musseridge waved a hand in dismissal. “Same answer I give every other perp who asks, Why would I have done that? You thought you could get away with it.”
Regretting the wasted ten seconds, Thornton changed tack. “Lamont was killed for the same reason Peretti and O’Clair were. All three got in the way of an operation whose objective has been to eavesdrop on the Sokolovs. Firstbrook was in on it. You’ll want to get into the SofTec office in Bridgetown before it’s rolled up. That’s what Agent Lamont was trying to do.”
“I know about the operation at SofTec,” Musseridge said. “It’s why you and Miss Mallery broke in and planted the bomb.”
Thornton hoped this was a bluff. “Bomb?”
“A brick of Semtex 10 you evidently took from a locked safe at the Bank of Barbados construction site. Didn’t you once write a story on safecrackers?”
“I also once wrote a story about a civilian who solved an FBI cold case.”
“Well, the blast demolished whatever Mallery was bankrolling there.”
“Suppose I told you SofTec fronts a U.S. intelligence service?”
“I’d ask if you had any evidence.”
“You’d call it hearsay. The evidence was at SofTec. Maybe still is. There’s a good chance the security guard knows something.”
“In that case, it’s unfortunate you blew him to bits.”
Thornton cursed to himself. Why the hell, he wondered, was he bothering with Musseridge? It was increasingly obvious that he would have to obtain evidence by himself. He regarded his two sets of cuffs, each set with its own lock. The person with a Bic pen-type method of unlocking them probably hadn’t been born yet.
The door swung open, forestalling Musseridge’s next question. Thornton made out four men clustered in the dark corridor. A fifth, a U.S. Marshal, stepped past them and into the doorway, his gray crew cut catching the faint light. Thornton recognized him as the leader of the Con Air detachment. The marshal beckoned Musseridge, who lugged himself over with all the enthusiasm of someone going out into a rainstorm.