As the light loomed closer, Milbank changed his attitude. It was not a motorcycle after all but a one-eyed jack, a car with a burned-out headlight. When it passed, he saw that it was hauling a small covered rented trailer. The trailer had no lights at all on the back. Idiot. Still going too fast and overrunning his only headlight. With the extra weight pushing from behind, the driver would not possibly be able to stop in time if something happened. Milbanks flipped on his light bar and laid tracks of hot rubber on the pavement as he accelerated out of his hiding spot and swung in behind the car, catching it in ten seconds flat. He tapped the siren, and the car slowed and pulled to a stop in the safety lane.
The trooper had a feeling about this, one of those cop-gut forebodings that warned him to take things slow and easy. After halting, he had notified Troop Headquarters of his position and told the dispatcher to stand by. He had parked at an angle in order to bathe the target car with a high-intensity spotlight as well as with the headlights, effectively blinding the driver.
“Keep your hands on the steering wheel,” he ordered, with his voice magnified by a loudspeaker system. Then he unlocked his Winchester pump 12-gauge shotgun and laid it on the front seat as he slid out, leaving the door open. Keeping his heavy flashlight in his left hand and unsnapping the holster of his Glock 23 pistol, Milbank walked to the left rear of the car, watching the hands of the driver as he cautiously approached the side window.
A dark face, but not African American, more of an olive skin. The first thought was that he had stopped an illegal immigrant. “Habla usted inglés?” asked Milbank.
The driver blinked. “What?”
“Use one hand only, and give me your driver’s license, then the registration and insurance.”
“Why? I have done nothing wrong.” The driver dug out the necessary identification and handed it to the trooper.
The funny accent, a thick beard, and now some attitude. A drunk? “Sir, would you please slowly open your door and step out of the vehicle?”
The driver stayed where he was, turning a grim face toward the trooper. “I refuse. I want a lawyer!”
Milbank decided against the Taser in this developing situation. He drew his handgun and pointed it. “Get out of the damned car. Right now. Keep those hands where I can see them!” Using his shoulder radio microphone, the trooper summoned backup help.
The driver opened the door slowly and swung his legs out, then unfolded from the seat. Overweight, dirty sneakers, rumpled jeans, and a shirt hanging unbuttoned over a T-shirt.
“Put your hands on the car and spread your legs.”
The driver began to turn but planted his right foot hard on the pavement and in a quick movement broke into a run, cutting around the front of the car, passing through the headlights, and reaching the darkness beyond. The trooper hesitated to fire his weapon at someone he had just stopped for having a busted headlight.
Milbank did not chase him but walked to the runoff ditch alongside the road and shined his flashlight along the perimeter. “Go ahead and run, Bubba,” he called out. “Nothin’ out there but pine trees, poison ivy, skeeters, and snakes for twenty miles in any direction. Try not to hurt yourself before daylight when we bring in the hound dogs.” He stayed alert, with his pistol ready, and walked the roadside for another five minutes until a county police unit rolled up, then two more Highway Patrol cars, one bringing his sergeant.
The license and tags and registration all matched to the name of Pejman Mobili of Tuckahoe, Virginia, and Trooper Milbank identified the license photograph as that of the driver. Now having probable cause for a search, police went through the vehicle and trailer, found a stash of weapons, ammo, and a Kevlar vest, and impounded everything. The limping suspect was arrested by eight o’clock the following morning, dehydrated and hungry, with a sprained right ankle and a face so puffy with mosquito bites that both eyes were swollen shut.
4
Lieutenant colonel Sybelle Summers and Gunnery Sergeant Kyle Swanson were the only uniformed personnel in a late-morning conference room deep within the Washington Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Unless you counted dark blue suits as uniforms, thought Swanson; then it would include everyone else. Representatives of all of the alphabet agencies were around the polished table, a show of teamwork for the Anti-Terrorism Task Force — the ATTF. Everybody in the room was supposedly equal, but of course that was not true. The ATTF flow chart had mushroomed over the years after being founded on the dreadful rubble of the 9/11 attacks. Back then, the American intelligence agencies hardly spoke to each other as territorial wars and budget battles were legendary. Now at least they all talked, but the ATTF itself had become as Byzantine as anything that could be found two blocks away in the International Spy Museum.
The only one to whom Kyle and Sybelle paid attention was the obvious big dog, their old friend David Hunt, one of the FBI’s five special agents in charge of the powerful Washington Field Office, also known by its own acronym as the WFO.
The lights were dim in the conference room as one of the ATTF agents flipped through a PowerPoint presentation concerning the arrest of Pejman Mobili by the Alabama Highway Patrol. A legal resident of Tuckahoe, Virginia, the Iranian national had been elevated from the cause of a mere state traffic beef to the subject of intense federal interest when law enforcement computers spat out a ballistics match on a 7.62mm Dragunov rifle found in his trailer to the bullet that had killed accountant Norman Haynes in Maryland the night before.
“To sum it up, we’ve taken a highly trained Iranian sniper off the board. Good work by the troopers, and a bit of good luck for the home team,” the agent said, wrapping up his slide show. He seemed pleased. The ATTF was hungry for success, particularly for one that might even be made public in a sanitized version.
Swanson and Summers glanced at each other, and Hunt caught the look. After the initial round of greetings, the two Marines had remained silent as ATTF specialists had spoken in turn, covering the case from a counterterrorism standpoint. Hunt addressed them. “Colonel Summers, Gunny Swanson, I asked both of you to this briefing because your unexpected presence at the original crime scene helped break this case. What are your opinions at this point?”
Sybelle placed her hands flat on the polished table, and every eye was on her. “You are giving this guy way too much credit. He was never any superman. Just look at his picture. He’s a slovenly mess.”
“Excuse me, Colonel Summers, but his mission in Maryland demonstrated a high degree of competence. Becoming such a good sniper required serious military training, obviously in Iran.” The speaker, a serious young woman from the CIA, lowered her half-glasses to the tip of her nose.