“No. It was about an hour away, inside the mountains.”
“So how’d they ambush Marley?”
“What do you mean?”
Knuckles looked at me, and I knew where he was headed. He said, “They had toknowhe was traveling that way, and that trip couldn’t have been a pattern of life of his, something he did daily.”
Wolffe thought about that, and I asked the obvious question, “Who knew about the transfer?”
He said, “Only the Taskforce.”
Wolffe took Knuckles’ theory to its logical conclusion, “You think there’s a leak inside the Taskforce?”
Knuckles said, “I think these guys knew Marley would be on thatspecificroad on thatspecificnight, and if what you’re saying is true, the only ones who would have known that were Taskforce personnel.”
“Maybe it was just a target of opportunity. Maybe they ran into Marley on that road accidentally, and what happened, happened.”
I said, “Maybe, but if so, why isn’t there another body at the site? Where’s the Ghost? You think a meth-head biker gang is going to let a witness live when they’re killing cops?”
Wolffe glanced at the screen and said, “Hang on. It looks like President Hannister’s had enough of the blame game.”
I turned to the screen in time to hear the president say, “Let’s leave the recriminations for later and deal with solving the problem. The immediate question is the Ghost. Do we release everything we have on the escapee to law enforcement?”
Kerry said, “Sir, that’s asking for trouble. Nobody from Justice is read-on to the Taskforce.”
Because the Taskforce itself worked outside the bounds of United States Code, at its formation it had been determined that the attorney general of the United States would never be an Oversight Council member. The president had decided it would be unseemly for someone whose primary job was to faithfully execute the laws of the country acting as a member of a council doing precisely the opposite.
Palmer said, “We could get him into the system somehow. We can get Justice to play ball. We feed him from CIA, saying they had a threat vector and he’s now inside the United States.”
Exasperated, Kerry said, “It doesn’t work that way. Are we just going to give them a photo? We don’t even know his real name, and we don’t have any current intelligence to backstop a ploy like that. Where’s he supposedly from? How come nobody in the entire intelligence community has heard anything about him at all? He’s not on a single threat tree anywhere, and we’re supposed to interject into the system that an expert assassin has magically entered the United States and is on the loose? That’s asking for a compromise of the Taskforce.”
Amanda Croft said, “What do you propose? Let him kill someone first so the FBI can figure out there’s a threat? Let him go out in a blaze of glory as a lone wolf, with the civilian deaths just collateral damage to protect the Taskforce?”
Kerry whipped his head to her and said, “Of course not. It’s not a binary choice.”
Wolffe grinned and said, “Good old Kerry. Here it comes.”
I said, “What?”
“You.”
Chapter 13
Shane Tuscadero slapped at a fly on his forehead, missing it but feeling the slime of his sweat. At eight in the morning the inside of the trailer must have been eighty or eighty-five, but with the stillness of the air it felt like a hundred. He couldn’t imagine what it was like in the heat of the day. He heard footsteps in the gravel outside and rolled upright, the springs in the torn, lumpy couch he was using as a bed groaning at the shift in weight.
The cheap metal door opened, letting in the sunlight, the motes of dust in the air swirling at the intrusion. Flynn stood outside, saying, “Get up. I got us a car.”
Shane began putting on his boots, saying, “How many more nights are we going to stay down here?”
“It depends. The Papago ID is done. Just waiting on Taco to cross back over the border with the other documents. Come on. We need to torch that van.”
Shane stood up, stretched, then followed Flynn out the door. Next to the van they’d driven down he saw an old Crown Victoria with bald tires and rusted paint. Flynn opened the door to the Crown Vic and said, “Follow me. I found a place to ditch it.”
Shane said, “Shouldn’t we check on our guy before we go?”
Flynn stopped and said, “Haven’t you?”
“Not since last night, and it’s hot as shit in my trailer. That shed has got to be roasting.”
