Androcide (Intel 1 Book 5) Read online

  “Just got a lucky guess.”

  Sacker nodded. “My opinion, too. She also told us to check the mouth pH.”

  Ladner squinted. “The mouth what?”

  “pH. I’m not sure what it is, but has something to do with chemistry. Acids, bases, salts and things.”

  “You ever heard of anyone checking the mouth pH as part of a homicide investigation, Tyrell?” Sacker shook his head. “Yeah, me neither. She’s a hack. Don’t waste any more time on this Gone. Okay?”

  “Right, Chief. Thanks.”

  Doubts appropriately vindicated.

  He stood and left the office. It didn’t make any sense to bring in a nobody PI. Not on a case like this. Embarrassing he’d bothered his boss, really.

  Mouth pH.

  He sat down and stared at the email. A random guess on the organ damage, that’s all. Gone was a startup looking for a break. Ladner was right; this was a waste of time. He deleted the message.

  Still....

  17

  Best Laid Plans

  Beneath the frenetic motion of busy civilians on the island of Manhattan, buried seven stories in the bedrock of a resurrected governmental Cold War bunker and accessed only through a hidden and guarded parallel passage to the Holland Tunnel, another kind of activity dominated. Here hundreds of men and women labored, their employment absent from all governmental ledgers, their names scrubbed from official databases. Soldiers and intelligence agents intermingled, weapons and computers side by side, high-tech equipment covering the thick, granite walls throughout a honeycomb of rooms. The hum of electricity and cooling fans hung in the air like an invisible fog.

  In the center of this place that did not officially exist, in a cavernous room taking a page out of NORAD command centers, John Savas and Rebecca Cohen stood before a set of enormous monitors displaying false-color, real-time satellite imagery, reconnaissance photographs, and the pixellated faces of INTEL 1 agents Sara Houston and Francisco Lopez. On speaker was the midwestern twang of Elaine York, President of the United States.

  “I don’t have much time,” she said. “Putin is stirring things up again. You folks need to sell me on this mission. Go or no go.”

  This is moving too fast.

  Rebecca Cohen’s brunette strands were in disarray, the eyes behind her square-rimmed glasses bloodshot. She sipped from a silver thermos, the coffee pungent in the filtered air. She glanced up at the screen.

  “There are so many unknowns, Ms. President,” Cohen said. “It’s very high risk, very high reward.”

  “Give me the ground game again.”

  Cohen looked at Savas who rolled his eyes. He’s reaching his limit. The quest to hunt down the vestiges of the Bilderberg Group drained them terribly over the last year. Months of little sleep and intense pressure, chasing a deadly quarry, one to become more deadly if they allowed it to escape. Deadly in a way they knew only too well. Lost agents, murdered in foreign lands far from home, tortured, and left as warnings, their broken bodies discovered by INTEL 1 as Nemesis deigned: corpses decorated with a single, purple hyacinth.

  Sonbol. Cohen grimaced and returned her eyes to the screen.

  She didn’t need to look to see the graying of Savas’s hair, his olive skin a rich caramel underneath the crown of white. She knew every contour of his form, had felt his exhaustion each night as they lay in each other’s arms. This destructive chase had to end soon.

  I just hope Nemesis cracks before we do.

  “The infrared and microwave imaging from space is definitive, Ms. President,” she began. “Zanjani was right—there’s an extensive network beneath the monument. The underground buildings are accessed via a central shaft located here.” She moved a digital pointer on the satellite imagery. “Likely an elevator. Thermal imaging patterns—heat sources, venting—show occupation. Someone lives underground. Whoever it is, they’ve gone to a lot of trouble to hide themselves.”

  “But not the Iranian government?” said York.

  Savas cut in, his voice a rasp. “Negative, Ms. President. Of course, there’s no way to know for sure, but there’s been zero chatter, no data on this hideout from any intelligence source, foreign or domestic. The Iranian government couldn’t hide its centrifuges from us, no way they could keep something like this quiet.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose. Cohen felt a tension headache radiating toward her. “Nemesis is in Tehran. Everything backs that up. It’s logical Bilderberg would have funded this lair for her alone. From all the data we’ve gathered, she basically controls the Iranian government, anyway.”

  The voice of Lopez crackled over the distant connection. “The last tentacle of the octopus. No other Bilderberg node exists that controls something so large as a nation-state. She came after us with governmental special forces.”

  “Given this assessment,” said Cohen, “and the recent attack on our agents there, we are convinced she is in Tehran, mostly likely in the Azadi Tower bunker. This is a unique opportunity to finally end this.”

  “Exactly,” said Savas. “Our recommendation’s the full assault plan outlined in the report. We have a team of special forces with agent Lightfoote undercover in Tehran. They are Farsi-speaking Iranian-Americans, well-recruited, excellent soldiers. They’ll accompany Gabriel and Mary, along with our CIA contact in the city, infiltrate the bunker, and neutralize any of Mirnateghi’s forces. The intention is to capture her and render her to American-controlled areas.”

  York exhaled. “What’s the old saying about intentions, roads, and hell? This could blow up in our faces. Your forces will be in the center of Tehran conducting an armed invasion of a national monument. What could go wrong?”

  Cohen ground her teeth. “A lot could go wrong. It could become an international incident, tarnish your presidency, not to mention getting our agents killed.”

  “Don’t worry about us!” clipped Houston through the static. “We’re good to go!”

  There was silence on the presidential line. Savas looked at Cohen, who shook her head.

  I don’t think she’s this crazy, John.

  And maybe she was right not to be.

  “Your fail-safe?” came the President’s words.

  Cohen swallowed. “Blow the entire location. We have two teams for bugging our people out. But if all fails, her lair has to be taken out. All involved know the stakes.”

  “Jesus.” York was silent another moment. “You know, back when the country was collapsing around us and we were flying down the highway firing shotguns out of a ’70s recreational vehicle, I felt I got to know the bunch of you. In a way nothing else in life can equal. But now?”

  She paused. “It was some kind of crazy to give INTEL 1 this power, bury you in the irritable bowels of America, black-ops every god damn thing you did. But I trusted you misfits after we climbed out of hell together. And we had to do something after Bilderberg. Free the world and all that good stuff. But fighting these monsters, we’re starting to look too damn much like them. Getting sick to my stomach.”

  Cohen watched Savas put his hands on the table in front of him, locking eyes with her. He shook his head. The mission was dead before it began.

  “Green-lit,” came a sharp voice over the speakers. “Keep me in real time when it plays. Don’t fuck this up.”

  The connection was broken.

  Cohen let out a long breath. Through the monitor, Lopez’s voice broke the silence.

  “Be careful what you ask for. You just might get it.”

  18

  Loadstone

  “Oh, holy hell.”

  Sacker rued answering the phone this Saturday morning. Two weekends in a row, he’d been hauled out of bed to a crime scene. His personal and social life smoked like the usual wreckage it was, so he was happy to keep distracted. But there had to be limits.

  Especially with this case.

  “Well, this raises the profile a bit.” Hill’s eyes were wide.

  The yellow police tape clashed with the dark grays and greens of the
soaring gothic structure and its pitted stone facade and towering spires. Spectacular crowds gathered for a Saturday sunrise in the city. The atmosphere crackled, New Yorkers boisterous. And why not? It wasn’t every day you found a body displayed like butcher’s meat in front of the nation’s most famous house of worship. The Eunuch Maker had hit celebrity status.

  Never take a work call Saturday morning, Tyrell.

  He should have been deep in dream, waking later in blissful forgetfulness of the last week’s insanities. Then a warm shower, some cool jazz, buttered toast, eggs, bacon.

  Instead, a body dumped in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

  He raised his eyes to the glory of the cathedral’s main entrance, focusing on a cross-topped spire over concentric stone arches and dropping to an enormous wooden door. He didn’t want to look farther than the door. But the monstrous demanded attention.

  A naked body, corpulent, purple and bruised, squatted in front of the ornate wood. The cadaver was dismembered, the dissected crotch the focus of jutting hips.

  It’s just open season on our man-parts.

  The corpse sported an unusual decoration: a donut-shaped concrete slab the size of a tire around his neck. Words were painted in red on the stone.

  “Who IDed him?”

  “A representative from the local bishop,” said Hill. “These Catholics have a military grade rapid response team for these PR problems. Want to take a guess about our victim? You’re gonna love it.”

  Sacker frowned. “Please don’t tell me he’s some defrocked priest that molested little boys.”

  “Ca-ching! Good guess, sir. But not defrocked. Just a forced retirement.”

  “Oh, Lordy. Eunuch Maker’s developing a flare for the theatrical.”

  He took a deep breath. Time to go up there, examine that corpse, take notes and parse mutilation and death before breakfast. Once again, enter into the diseased mind of a killer.

  Sacker squinted toward the body and stalled. “What’s the stone say?” He sipped at the lousy deli coffee, uninterested in getting any closer without caffeine.

  Snyder answered. ‘Better with a millstone.’ No one has any idea what it means.”

  Sacker laughed. “None of you ever go to Sunday school?” There was an awkward silence. “And Jesus spake unto the disciples: ‘It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble.’” Sacker shook his head. “When I’m the learned Christian in the world, the apocalypse is nigh.”

  “Killer’s going pretty literal with that,” said Hill.

  “How’d he get that thing around the poor bastard’s neck? Let me guess, no witnesses.”

  “No living witnesses.”

  “I didn’t mean the priest.”

  “Me, either,” said Hill. “This is St. Patrick’s, right next to Rockefeller Center, not some Upper East Side residential. Cameras all over the place.”

  Sacker cast a withering look in her direction. “And you have leveraged the full weight of the NYPD to get access to the footage, right?”

  “Already done, sir,” she beamed. “Mentioned the killer could be a terrorist. Opens all the doors.”

  Real potential in her.

  “Good work, detective.” He looked back to the sacrilege above them. “He’s getting grandiose. And pride cometh before a fall.”

  Snyder scowled. “I can see the bruising from here. And the mutilation.”

  “Yeah, same MO. Same general class of targets. It’s our guy, all right.”

  “Or girl,” said Hill.

  “Or girl,” said Sacker. “It might as well be Hercules for how that rock got here. Okay, let’s give it a closer once-over and get ready for Sutherland and his team.”

  “Detective Sacker?” A nasal voice behind him.

  He turned to see a suited man accompanied by uniformed officers.

  And the lawyers arrive.

  “Yeah, that’s me.”

  “The church authority has asked me to arrange for the removal of the body. We just need your permission and a location, and we’ll have it delivered.”

  “Anxious to clean up the Cathedral front door?”

  “Yes, of course they are.”

  Sacker watched as news crews set up around the crime scene. “Well, we’ve got a little thing ongoing called an investigation. You might have heard of those.” The man swallowed. “Means we do things our way and at our own pace. Apologies for the coming YouTube videos, tweets, and Facebook posts. But those horses are already out of the barn.”

  The lawyer’s mouth drew into a line and he turned on a heel, storming off.

  “You’d think they would care as much about finding the killer as protecting their image,” said Hill.

  “You’d think we all would, Kathy. Glass houses and stones.”

  Sacker turned away from the cathedral and popped a nicotine strip. The crowds had grown even larger. He felt another headache coming on.

  “I wonder what qualifies for early retirement.”

  He glanced at the statue of the Virgin Mary and prayed the growing noise wasn’t the blades of a news helicopter.

  19

  Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

  “You drivin’ home tonight, Chief?”

  Sacker’s head swam. He tried to place the voice. A shot glass swayed in front of him, the whiskey low.

  How many tonight?

  He couldn’t remember. A bad sign.

  Why am I so drunk?

  Another bad sign.

  “Yo, Chief? You there?”

  Oh, yes. Pat. The bartender. Weren’t they all named Pat? Well, he thought it was Pat. The bartender he thought was named Pat blurred in front of him.

  I’m at Merry’s! That’s right. Nice little pub. Few yuppies. Too grungy for them, too many colors and odd people. A place Sacker could get a bit hammered in comfort.

  “What’s that, Pat?”

  “I asked if you was drivin’ tonight. I don’t think you’ll be passin’ any breath-tests.”

  “Right. Yeah. No. Not driving. Gonna walk it off. Lot on my mind.”

  Pat nodded. “It’s that killer sawin’ off those guys’ junk, ain’t it? I seen you on TV. I knew it was you, right off. I told my wife, ‘Damn if that ain’t Chief Tyrell!’”

  “Not a chief, Pat.” His stomach heaved. Bile-flavored.

  “Yeah, yeah. So, the cops found anything on this guy?”

  Don’t talk. Walk away, Tyrell.

  “No. Not a damn thing. So, whiskey.” He waved the glass around.

  “Mmmm-hmmm. I get that. News can’t stop talkin’ about it.”

  Sacker downed the rest of the glass. “See, Pat, my chief’s pretty upset about it all. ‘We’re gonna need some answers soon, Tyrell. Somebody’s gonna find them, Tyrell. I hope to God it’s not the Feds, Tyrell.’ We don’t catch the guy, we look bad. NYPD looks bad. The mayor looks bad. See what I’m saying?” He fought to stop the room from spinning.

  “Gotta say, it all looks pretty bad on the TV.”

  “You oughta see the bodies up close. That’s bad.”

  The bartender grimaced and took a step back, shaking his head. “No sir, that’s why I pour drinks. Makes people happy.” He smiled and stacked glasses.

  The blurred lines were solidifying a little. Yes, the name was Pat. Irish, supposedly. Weren’t they all? Seasoned, probably in his sixties. Or older. Gap-toothed with a face of Rosacea scars, shock of blazing white hair always in disarray.

  Now, what was I gonna say to Pat?

  His cell buzzed.

  Fumbling with the device, he managed to enter the passcode before it locked him out. A text message. He squinted at the screen. From Grace Gone.

  “What the hell? Don’t these gumshoes ever quit? How’d she get my cell number?”

  “Sorry?” asked Pat, as the bartender turned toward Sacker.

  “Nothing, Pat. Message.”

  “From a lady, I hope?” He f
lashed the gap again.

  “As a matter of fact, yes. But business related.”

  “Can start that way.”

  “Mmmm.” He read through the long message. Same things she said before. Mentioned the third killing. His mind treaded water with the booze and words. Internal hemorrhaging. Marks around the mouth and nose; pH.

  “This girl’s just crazy.”

  “Maybe crazy’s what you need, Chief.”

  “Like an amputation,” he said, pocketing the phone.

  Pat leaned forward, donning his best bartender-therapist expression. “You say business, right? Well, that means police. Right now, that’s gotta mean the killings. Am I wrong?” Sacker looked away. “So, that means your lady’s got ideas you don’t like about the killings? Yeah?”

  “She’s not my lady. Yes, she has ideas. She wants to meet. She’s a private eye.”

  “Gumshoe! Yeah. Like Mike Hammer. I get it. Do the work you can’t ’cause it’s too rough, dirty.”

  “She’s a tiny Asian chick with an expired firearms license. There won’t be any Mike Hammering going on.”

  Pat embraced his time as a psychologist. “Yeah, then she’s brainy, like Sherlock Holmes. She’ll see all the things like a computer you can’t. That’s why she sounds crazy! Just like in the shows and then all the clues will show she’s right!” He beamed.

  Sacker frowned. He came to the pub to escape the precinct, not debate case procedure.

  “Or maybe she’s a nobody gumshoe working out of a dump in Queens who hasn’t been involved in a single meaningful investigation. Drop it, Pat. We don’t outsource work to PIs at NYPD. Not in my precinct, not on this case.” The anger sobered him up a little.

  Pat tried one more volley. “Okay, Chief, but like you said, things are bad and heads gonna roll soon. Ha! Maybe some more willies gonna roll, too! Ha! Ha!”

  “And?”

  “Maybe it’s time to get desperate. Sometimes, ya gotta throw the Hail Mary.” Pat winked and walked off to serve another customer, leaving Sacker to stew in his fermented juices.