He didn’t feel guilty.
Thirty minutes later he asked, “How long until Santa Barbara?”
Megan and Hans listened to Jack go over yesterday’s events. The more she listened, the more she realized she would have done almost the exact same things, except she wouldn’t have tackled a known drug smuggler in public, nor would she have broken into a secure crime scene to look around. The former action was all testos-trone; the latter could jeopardize the legal case.
Scout’s missing dog tag was an important bit of information that was not in Perez’s reports, and something that easily could have been overlooked. But that was not the case with the mysterious brunette who may have been at both El Gato and Father Francis’s St. Ignatius. If Perez had been doing his job right, he should have made the connection, and not gone off on the wild theory that some rebels in Guatemala crossed the border for retribution against Jack and his team.
“Are you certain it’s the same woman?” Megan asked.
“Almost certain,” Jack said. “From Padre’s description and two people at the bar, she appears to be the same. There’re not a lot of non-Hispanic women in town. She’d stick out whether she was white, black, or Asian.”
“Could be completely unrelated,” Hans said. “But it’s a good idea that you called in your men to stick by Father Francis for the time being, until we have better intel about the motives of the killers.”
“We need to get a sketch artist here,” Megan said. “Have Padre describe the woman while she’s still fresh in his mind. We can call her a potential witness, nothing about being a possible suspect.”
“And it may have nothing to do with this case,” Hans said.
“And it may have everything to do with this case!” Megan shot back. “It’s the only thing we have right now. There’s no forensic evidence to help us narrow down a suspect. We have a stranger in town, a woman who shows up at a known hangout for two men who were on the same Delta Force team, a team that is systematically being slaughtered.”
“Father Francis is alive,” Hans said.
“And that means what?” Jack said, his voice low with anger. “That he’s involved?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“But you thought it.”
“He has an alibi for the first three-”
Jack pushed back from the table. “Don’t.”
“It’s part of our job,” Hans said. He was uncomfortable, but he held Jack’s glare. “We have to rule out everyone. Including you.”
Hans’s BlackBerry vibrated on the table and he picked it up. A few seconds later he said, “First Lieutenant Jerome ‘Jerry’ Jefferson is confirmed in Afghanistan. Last leave was four months ago, which he spent in Hawaii.”
“Which means what?” Megan asked.
“The killers can’t get to him.” To Jack, he said, “Sit down, Jack. We need to work through this.”
Jack continued standing.
Megan said, “We don’t know how many killers there are, we only suspect two. There could be three, ten, an entire conspiracy.”
“Meg, I think you’re stretching it-”
She put up her hand, then winced when she remembered how much she hated it when the jerk from CID did it to her. “Yes, to illustrate a point. We have no idea who is behind these killings. We have very basic victi-mology-they were all U.S. Army Delta Force soldiers who worked together for a period of two years on dozens of missions. But we don’t know which mission triggered the killer, why he-they-are acting now, or why they’ve chosen to kill in such a brutal manner.
“So until we know why, we don’t know that Jefferson isn’t in danger, or that he isn’t the one spearheading the attacks. And this woman might have information. Maybe she’s a battered girlfriend or wife-”
Hans interrupted. “This crime is too masculine.”
“Why? Because it doesn’t have a sexual component?”
“Most male-female killing pairs are enacting sadistic sexual fantasies, or the female is bait, luring the victims for her dominant male partner.”
“But this isn’t sexual sadism, this feels like revenge. Whether directed toward these men because of who they are, or what they represent, I don’t know. But why not a woman? A wife or sister of a dead soldier?”
“I don’t know. There hasn’t been any hint-”
“Except for the female stranger in town. Profiling is based on statistics, Hans. You taught that in Criminal Psychology 101. If four out of five serial killers were abused as children, that still means that twenty percent weren’t abused.”
Hans nodded. “Okay, we follow that trail. I’ll ask the Rangers to send a sketch artist for Father Francis to work with.”
“Sketch artist?” Padre said as he stepped into the kitchen. “For what?”
“The woman you saw at the church late Tuesday night,” Megan said. She glanced at Jack. He was still standing at the table, but the tension and anger had left his stance. He seemed intrigued and contemplative. He caught her eye and gave her a slight smile. She turned away. “Do you have the list of missions?”
Padre put a notepad in front of her. “Here.” He looked defeated.
“Thank you, Padre.” Megan read his notes. All the missions where the dead had worked together were in Afghanistan. “All eight of you were on each mission?”
“No. I also included missions where I didn’t go as part of the team, or Jefferson didn’t go. Since we’re both still alive.”
“What type of missions?”
“They’re classified.”
“I can’t work with something that’s ‘classified,’ “ Megan said. “If something that happened on one of these missions is somehow de facto responsible for these men being targeted, then I need to know.”
Padre seemed to have changed overnight. More hard edges and temper than the priest who had picked up her and Hans the night before at the airstrip. Megan ached that the man had to cough up his past demons, but she also knew that if he didn’t, more people would die.
“Some of the missions were assassinations. Some were extractions or liberations.” Padre left it at that.
Jack asked quietly, “How successful?”
“The third mission was a disaster. Our intel was wrong and we nearly got ambushed. Aborted and regrouped two days later. The last mission was also a failure. We lost a man. Thornton. I told you about him last night.”
“Orders?” Jack asked.
“Seize a high-ranking Taliban member. He was a weak link, had a regular mistress. High security, but no change in habits. We’d been gathering intel on him for months. We went in, but-” He stopped.
“And?”
“The P.R. department had us bring a civilian with us. Open-door policy.”
“A civilian? On a Delta mission?” Jack couldn’t keep the shock out of his voice. “They’ve sent reporters and cameras to the lines, which is foolhardy, but on one of our missions? That’s insane.”
“Another reporter, a big guy, had done it the year before with great success, according to the powers that be. But I found out later that that reporter had spent three years in the Marines. He went in because he’d gone to basic with a guy who could get him in. He had experience and could take care of himself. We didn’t know any of that, of course, only that afterward the Marines had a lot of favorable press and write-ups, lots of backslap-ping and goodwill toward man.” Sarcasm hung in the air.
“Your civilian was a reporter?”
Padre nodded. “An idiot. He screwed up the mission, and worse, he got Thornton killed.”
“What?” Megan asked when Padre didn’t continue. “Is he dead, too?”
“Barry Rosemont didn’t do what we told him to do. We knew we were being surrounded, and there was no way to get out. We had to call in an extraction team, breaking radio silence, which alerted the Taliban to our exact location. Russo ordered us to split into two teams and left Thornton with Rosemont in what we believed was the most secure location. They were supposed to stay in the rocks, radio silence, no matter what they heard until the Blackhawks arrived.