Blind Instinct Read online

  Corcoran had been with Marc in the FBI. Marc had headhunted him when he’d made the move to National Intelligence to head the task force that had been assigned to take down two key criminal organizations: the Chavez cartel, headed by Alex Lopez, and a secretive political cabal formed decades ago by ex-SS officers.

  Apart from the fact that Corcoran was a damned good agent and a friend, he was a crucial link in Marc’s team. He had been personally responsible for tracking down and indicting over two hundred members of Lopez’s network and shutting the cartel down along most of the Eastern Seaboard. Among the arrests had been officials in a raft of government departments, but he had bagged a couple of bigger fish—notably, two federal agents.

  The door to the morgue swung closed behind him. The cold pungent smell, laced with chemical, made his jaw clench. He had known Corcoran for more than ten years. He had been invited to dinner at Jim’s house and had attended his wedding and his daughter’s christening. Losing Jim wouldn’t just be a blow to his team; it would hurt.

  The room was congested with morgue personnel and D.C.’s finest: two uniforms and a detective, who introduced himself as Dan Herschel.

  Marc moved smoothly through the formalities. The two uniforms had gotten to the scene first, then Herschel had taken the case. But Marc’s attention was on the two bodies residing on narrow metal tables, both encased in body bags.

  The medical examiner, a slim fiftysomething woman with taut features and tired eyes , unzipped the PVC far enough that Marc could view the first face.

  Shit. Fuck.

  Corcoran.

  The second body was that of a woman who had gotten caught in the crossfire. PVC peeled open over pale skin, dark hair and delicate cheekbones.

  Sara.

  Time seemed to slow, stop. Blood pounded through his veins in quick, hard strokes.

  The panic was irrational. It wasn’t Sara Fischer. She was safely locked into her life in Shreveport, Louisiana. He had seen her just weeks ago at her father’s funeral. This woman was younger, in her early twenties, and her hair was black, not dark brown, but for long seconds those facts failed to make any difference.

  A phone beeped, the sound harsh and discordant. The M.E. backed off a few steps to take the call, and Marc focused on Detective Herschel reciting facts with flat precision as he read from notes.

  Corcoran had walked to a café to get lunch. The woman had been entering as Corcoran was leaving and had simply gotten in the way. The gunman had shot her first, then hit Corcoran, one to the chest, a second shot to the head. The hit had been very fast, very precise. Hampered by a paper bag and a foam cup, Corcoran hadn’t had time to reach for his gun.

  Marc dragged his gaze from the dead woman’s face. With every second that passed she looked less and less like Sara. “Witnesses?”

  “The café owner saw what happened, but only from inside the building. We’re working on tracing some of the regular customers who were eating at the tables outside.”

  “Any description of the shooter?”

  “Male, medium height, dark hair that’s graying at the temples. No facial details because he was wearing a mask.”

  Lopez. Was it possible? “Security tape footage?”

  Herschel had backed off a step. “Yes, sir, from two angles. A bank across the road and a traffic camera.”

  “I’ll need to see both, now. And talk to the café owner.”

  The quick tap of heels was followed by the muted swish of the doors swinging open. Jennifer Corcoran, accompanied by a uniformed policewoman, stepped into the morgue. Her face was white, her eyes stark and already red rimmed and swollen from crying.

  When she saw Marc, her mouth trembled. He reached her in two strides and held her tight, while Bridges cleared the room. The M.E. stepped back but didn’t leave, her face apologetic. Marc didn’t labor the point. As private as this moment was, there were formalities to be completed; she had to stay.

  Two hours later, Marc stepped into his office, dropped his briefcase on his desk and jerked at the knot of his tie.

  Both tapes and the café owner’s recollection had been inconclusive. The tapes had been blurred by distance and obscured by traffic and passersby. The mask the shooter had been wearing had successfully blanked out his features. Aside from the fact that he was approximately five-ten, dark-haired and no longer young, they had nothing.

  Bridges’s jaw was grim as he strolled over to the coffee machine in the corner of his office. “So, what now?”

  Marc shrugged out of his jacket and peeled off the shoulder rig. A raft of paperwork, a press release, sat on his desk: damage control. “I’m pulling my people off the team.”

  Two agents dead within a fortnight wasn’t enough to establish that Lopez was systematically killing men Marc had handpicked. A third killing would cement the pattern, but damned if he would risk losing anyone else.

  The first, Powdrell, had been an experienced field agent. Corcoran had been a step up into the executive ranks. The disparity in rank aside, both of the men had been ex-FBI, headhunted by Marc. He had known them personally, and they had both chosen to move from the Bureau to National Intelligence on the strength of that personal loyalty. Maybe it was just a coincidence that “his” people were being targeted, but Marc didn’t think so.

  Lopez was cold and methodical. Aside from the seemingly random killing of his own bodyguard at age twelve in Colombia, to Bayard’s knowledge, Lopez hadn’t made one move without good reason. In light of his consistent methodology, he was certain that first killing hadn’t been carried out in a psychotic fit of rage, either. At age twelve, Lopez—then known as Alejandro Chavez—had been experimenting with execution.

  The unprovoked killing had set off a chain of events that still reverberated. In order to extract Alex from prison, his father, Marco Chavez, had literally held the country to ransom, machine-gunning three villages then manipulating a pardon for Alex with the donation of a hospital. Following the wave of hatred for the Chavez cartel, and the death threats that had followed Alex’s release, Marco had been forced to remove his son from the country. Courtesy of the power and influence of the Nazi cabal, which had strong links with Marco, Alex had started a new life in the States under the name Lopez.

  Once in the States, protected and bankrolled by the cabal, Alex had thrived, heading up the American branch of the Chavez cartel and expanding into the international terrorism market. Until that point the relationship between the cartel and the Nazi cabal had been stable and mutually beneficial. In 1984, however, with the theft of billions of dollars from Lopez’s main operating account, the balance of power had shifted.

  In order to avert his own possible execution for the massive loss of cartel funds, Lopez had traveled to Colombia, murdered the only person who could order his death—his father—and taken control of the cartel. He had saved his own skin, but, heavily in debt, and with rival cartels circling, Lopez had been forced to go, cap in hand, to the cabal in order to survive.

  The cost of survival had been servitude, something Lopez had never had a talent for. As lethal as an asp, approximately eighteen months previously, he had manipulated his cabal “keepers,” threatening exposure of their secretive and politically powerful organization if they didn’t allow him entrance into their upper echelon. The cabal had acted swiftly, executing their own people in order to neutralize the threat and setting a trap to take down Lopez. But with federal agencies—including Interpol, MI6 and Mossad—now locked onto both Lopez and the cabal, the damage control was too late.

  A missile blast in Colombia had vaporized the Chavez fortress, located in Macaro, hundreds of miles east from Bogotá. Unfortunately, the cabal had missed killing Lopez and his right-hand man, former FBI agent Edward Dennison, by seconds. A further attempt to take Lopez out at a meeting in El Paso had also failed, and resulted in a state of war between the two organizations. Lopez had escaped, taking a wounded Dennison and his leverage with him—a book that exposed the cabal members. He had also left behin
d an interesting array of corpses—one of them Senator Radcliff, a bona fide, paid up member of the cabal’s upper echelon.

  Lopez had gone underground, only to surface months later as the lead suspect in a series of clever murders, which had systematically decimated the upper echelon of the cabal, leaving one lone member—the powerful but elusive Helene Reichmann, daughter of Heinrich Reichmann, the original architect of the cabal.

  The series of murders had been chilling and effective, demonstrating Lopez’s power and destroying a number of leads in Bayard’s investigation. Ultimately, the murders had proved to be a godsend, throwing the workings of the cabal wide and providing a huge investigative platform that meant Marc had been able to systematically take down both the cabal and Lopez’s networks.

  The rich scent of coffee filled the office, overlaying the faint, lingering scents of the morgue that still clung to his clothes and skin. He hadn’t eaten—neither of them had—so while he waited for the coffee he called in some takeout.

  Despite the caffeine, Bridges was a health nut. He rarely ate red meat and almost keeled over at the sight of fat, so Marc limited the selection to salads and sandwiches. In any case, after seeing Jim and the hollow emptiness in Jennifer’s eyes, he didn’t particularly care what he ate.

  Bridges handed him a cup. “Willard’s in Florida. Rossi’s home sick.”

  Otherwise Rossi would have been with Corcoran, and the hit might not have taken place. Supposition, maybe, but Marc doubted Lopez would have risked taking on two federal agents.

  The fact that Lopez had known Corcoran was on his own could have been the result of inside information, but that didn’t necessarily follow. If his surveillance was good enough, and it probably was, he would simply have recognized the opportunity and acted on it. “Willard’s on his way back. They’re both on leave until further notice.”

  Bayard studied the view from his office window while he drank his coffee. Ever since he had seen Corcoran, the back of his neck had been crawling. He had run through possible motivations, but the only one that linked both Powdrell and Corcoran was the investigation into Lopez. It was also a fact that the murders uncannily mirrored Lopez’s assault on the cabal.

  Two kills, both running with clocklike precision and no concrete leads. It took time, planning and good information to carry out a hit.

  Aside from the fact that his men were being hunted, he was also certain that someone within his own organization was leaking information.

  Lissa, his personal assistant, tapped on the door, breezed in, set a box on his desk and dangled an invoice. Marc peeled some bills out of his wallet and added a generous tip. The gourmet restaurant that regularly supplied the building made a point of extending deliveries into the early evening specifically for them, and the service was always prompt.

  Lissa flicked open the box on her way out and checked on the contents. “Looks like chick food to me.”

  Bridges looked faintly outraged. “What’s wrong with healthy food?”

  Lissa lifted her brows and sauntered out to pay the delivery boy.

  Smothering the first gleam of amusement he’d felt in a week, Marc examined the sandwiches, took the beef and mustard and left Bridges with the chicken. “She likes you.”

  Bridges started on his food. Lissa had been a reluctant focus for Bridges ever since he had moved into the office next to Marc’s. The combination of personalities was decidedly offbeat; Bridges the warrior monk, his principles as sharp-edged as a blade, and Lissa, divorced, sweetly cynical and with a city girl’s love of all things shopping. If anything ever happened it would be explosive. “You know you’re driving her crazy.”

  Bridges checked out his suit sleeve. “No markdown ticket from Saks. It’s not ever going to happen.”

  Just after five, Rear Admiral Saunders, Director of Special Projects and Marc’s boss, stepped into Marc’s office. “Any progress?”

  Marc sat back in his chair. “Nothing concrete yet. I’ve pulled Willard and Rossi off the task force. We’re tightening security.”

  He had closed down surveillance options around the building, but blocking every known camera wasn’t a cure-all. It was easy enough to install a hidden camera, and satellite coverage was a wild card he couldn’t control. If Lopez, or whoever it was who was targeting his team, wanted to watch them, there wasn’t much he could do to prevent that.

  He’d also put a team on running traffic cameras and collecting security tapes from every business within a four-block radius of the café where Corcoran had been shot. It was painstaking work and the results might not be conclusive, but his gut instinct said that Lopez had been the shooter and that he’d had to park a vehicle somewhere. If they could score a license plate, they would be closer than they had ever been to finally capturing him. “I’ve moved Jennifer and her daughter into a hotel until the funeral’s over.”

  He had also posted security around the house and issued a gag order for the press. If the fact that Corcoran had been an agent investigating Lopez were released, they had an even bigger problem. It was a remote possibility that Jennifer and her daughter could become targets themselves, and a given that if the media spilled the full story, every weirdo and head case in the country would crawl out of the woodwork to confuse an investigation that was already in trouble.

  Saunders’s expression was impassive as he listened to the details. “I talked to the director half an hour ago. He’s asked me to keep him briefed.”

  The remainder of the conversation was to-the-point and predictable. Saunders had a reputation for cleaning up messes and cutting through red tape with a facile skill that, over a career that had spanned decades, had won him more friends than enemies. That political savvy had shot him through the naval ranks and into the upper echelons of the intelligence sector. He was sharp and efficient, and it was no secret that he was standing in line for the job of Director of National Intelligence and a seat on the National Security Council. He needed a media circus now about as badly as he needed a heart attack.

  The inference was clear. Any shit, and he would pin it to Marc’s ass.

  Saunders exited with a crisp, “Keep me informed.”

  Lissa stepped into Marc’s office bare seconds after Saunders was out of earshot. She was on the point of leaving, the strap of her purse slung over one shoulder. “Do you think it matters to him that Jim died?”

  Bayard pulled up a file on his laptop. “Trust me, don’t go there.”

  Saunders had feelings—just not very many of them.

  The first time Marc had met Saunders had been over twenty years ago at the memorial service of Todd Fischer, Sara’s uncle and his friend Steve’s father. At that time, Saunders had been almost single-handedly responsible for the cover-up of the Nordika dive tragedy in which Todd Fischer had died, and the leaked file that claimed the “missing” naval dive team had deserted. His actions, aimed at protecting the Navy’s reputation, had reaped him professional advancement, but with the recent recovery of the bodies of the naval dive team in a mass grave in Juarez, Colombia, Saunders was hurting.

  When Lissa turned to leave, Marc stopped her. “Did you drive in today, or take the Metro?”

  Her expression was dry. “I don’t have a dedicated parking space so I’m afraid it’s the Metro. Why?”

  “I’ll ring down and get security to escort you to the station. Until further notice, you can drive in. I’ll authorize a parking space.”

  Her expression didn’t change, but Lissa was nobody’s fool. She had a double degree in foreign affairs and business administration. She ran his office like a well-oiled machine, and when it came to understanding the nuances of the intelligence world, she was as sharp as a seasoned agent. “You think it’s Lopez.”

  He kept his expression impassive. “I’m just taking precautions.”

  After calling security, then arranging that one of the visitor spaces be redesignated, he studied the file on Lopez. The moment in the morgue when Herschel had described the shooter replayed i
n his mind. The fact that Lopez had shot Corcoran himself was significant. Lopez’s network was in tatters, most of his key people behind bars. Financially, he had to be hurting.

  The fact that Lopez was killing to an agenda made him predictable and vulnerable. In strategic terms, Marc had the upper hand. He could play the decoy game and use offensive surveillance tactics. With the resources at his disposal, he could guarantee Lopez’s capture. He just had to get Lopez before he killed again.

  * * *

  Just after six, Marc drove into the garage of his apartment building, collected his mail and newspaper and took the elevator to his third-floor apartment. Leaving his briefcase in the hall, he tossed the mail and the newspaper on the dining table and walked through to the bathroom. If it had been a normal evening, he would have worked off the tension by going for an extended run, but Corcoran’s death had ruled out that option. Until they found the shooter, he and his staff couldn’t afford to expose themselves any more than necessary.

  Feeling restless, his muscles tight—a side effect of the fierce anger that had gripped him when he had seen Corcoran’s body in the morgue—he showered and changed into sweats. He could think of another way to relieve his tension, but that option wasn’t viable. He wasn’t into instant sex, and lately he didn’t have time for relationships. Snagging the remote on the way to the kitchen, he flicked on the television and caught the end of the evening news as he sipped a cold beer and reheated day-old pizza.

  Still feeling edgy, then outright pissed when he caught the sports news and saw that the Falcons had lost to the Giants, he ate, rinsed his dishes and stacked them in the dishwasher—not a complicated process when he’d drunk the beer direct from the bottle and the pizza had arrived encased in cardboard. When the kitchen was returned to its usual sterile state, he checked his mail and scanned the newspaper.