Blood Unleashed (Blood Stone) Read online

  Margo was the unofficial weapons expert of the branch. She was classified as an ordinary analyst, but her favorite hobby in the entire world was the study of guns – specifically rifles – along with a deep passion for ballistics and anything that rifles could do.

  Margo lifted herself up from the stool on wheels she was using as a desk chair and eased herself through the shoulders of the men in the room. She was a fifty year old woman with grey and silver hair tied sensibly into a bun at the back of her head. Her figure was matronly, with soft folds and huge breasts and hips. Marcus couldn’t remember her ever wearing trousers, let alone a suit. She always wore conservative and unfashionable dresses and skirts.

  She was a good analyst and even better with small arms. Marcus felt semi-happy. He was being pawned off, but Margo would sort this out for him. He had full confidence in her abilities.

  “Go with Anderson here,” McLaren told her. “He thinks he’s a target. See if he’s delusional or not.”

  “Thanks,” Marcus said dryly. He intentionally failed to produce the bullet still sitting in the pocket of his windbreaker. McLaren’s dismissive hand telling him to shut up had stopped him the first time. Being called delusional sealed it. He looked at Margo, who was watching him with her calm, soft brown eyes. She wouldn’t be able to cope with the two mile walk back to Pershing Square. “I’ll grab a cab and take you there. C’mon.”

  He didn’t bothering saying anything else to McLaren. The man had already moved back into the middle of the room, his head questing, absorbing all the data so he could make more important decisions.

  * * * * *

  Pershing Square was filled with office workers enjoying the watery and fitful sunshine during their lunch breaks. The chair with the bullet hole in it was miraculously unoccupied, although there was a retiree sitting in one of the other chairs at the table, feeding seagulls morsels of his sandwich, which he’d pulled out of a brown paper bag. That explained why the other chairs were empty. No one wanted to be shat on by squawking pests.

  Marcus brushed a seagull off the back of the chair he was interested in, and pulled it back into approximately the same position it had been sitting in when the shot had been fired.

  Margo astonished him by crouching down behind the back of the chair to look through the hole, displaying plump knees and more than a little bit of thigh, primly covered in dark tan pantyhose. Then she looked at the hole itself, fingering it just as Marcus had done. After a minute of silent consideration, she got to her feet and stood back, moving her head as she mentally traced the line of fire.

  She looked up at the City National building. “He would have had to by-pass security to get to the roof,” she said, speaking more to herself than to Marcus. “That’s not something you do with a CheyTac hanging over your shoulder.” She considered the building and the chair again and nodded. “He may have used an auto rifle that breaks down. You can stuff them into a small duffel bag or a large briefcase and no-one would know.” The last sentence was spoken directly to Marcus.

  Margo patted the chair back. “It’s around four hundred yards from the roof to here, so the range is small enough for an AR. No need for the big gun, as long as they had a high-end breakable weapon. The cheap ones aren’t worth smelting.” She smiled at her own joke, then looked at the grass behind the chair, measuring.

  “Here,” Marcus said, tapping with his boot, right over the divot he had replaced.

  Margo moved over to look down at the grass. “Did you—?”

  He held out the bullet on the palm of his hand, then closed his fingers over it, turned his hand over and dropped it into Margo’s small one. She cupped her hand so passers-by wouldn’t see what she held, and turned it over with the forefinger of her right hand. She did that for almost two minutes of contemplative silence, while seagulls squawked and flapped around them, fighting over tidbits.

  Marcus waited her out, giving her the time she needed to pull together all the factors in her mind and come up with something interesting.

  She hefted the bullet in her palm and handed it back to Marcus. “It’s quite the delusion you had. That’s a bullet from a three-oh-eight Winchester cartridge. Those cartridges are used for a huge number of rifles, but if you eliminate the bad ones and just look at the high end, then the number of possibilities drops. There’s only one breakdown AR that uses them.” She looked up at him, shading her eyes from the sun, which was breaking through clouds right over his shoulder. “We should head back and discuss this in a secure location.”

  “Sure. You can sweet-talk Frank at the front desk for me. The SOB thinks I’m a threat to his building or something.” He turned and headed for the Second Street entrance, where there was a good chance of finding a cab.

  Margo fell into step next to him. “Oh, you mustn’t mind Frank. His teenage daughter, Cassie, died when a drunk driver ran a red light. It was only last week but he’s back on the job because they’re short-staffed.”

  Marcus thought about that and about Frank, as the cab whisked them across six blocks. It reminded him that everyone had a story. There was always an explanation for just about every bizarre human behavior he’d ever witnessed.

  Except maybe for Clarke. He still wasn’t sure the guy wasn’t as genuinely stupid as he gave off. Time would take care of that. Stupid didn’t last long in the CIA, especially when you were out in the field. He’d seen it too many times.

  Chapter Three

  The brouhaha in Istanbul was over by the time they returned to the office. Agents were back at their desks and the office was humming.

  Margo tapped McLaren on the shoulder. “Can we talk? In your office?”

  McLaren glanced at Marcus, standing behind her. “Alright,” he said heavily and straightened up from the desk he had been leaning over to look at the monitor on it. He led them through the narrow alleys between the desks and into his glassed-in office.

  The desk was a blizzard of paper. There wasn’t a single hint of organized piles or any organization at all. Marcus had always wondered if the chaos was a reflection of McLaren’s thought processes. Looking at the snowdrift always made him vaguely uneasy.

  Margo shut the door and held her hand out to Marcus. “May I?”

  He dug out the bullet again and dropped it onto her hand. She lifted the slug up between her forefinger and thumb. It was only slightly mangled, because the plastic chair and the soil had given way. If it had hit something solid like concrete, it would be a flattened, indecipherable lump of lead. Instead, only the nose was slightly flattened, while the rest of the long silhouette was virtually untouched.

  “You mean someone was actually shooting at him?” McLaren asked, amazed.

  “Not just someone,” Margo said, studying the bullet closely. She pulled a pair of glasses out of a pocket and slid them on, examining it carefully.

  McLaren strode to the door and yanked it open. “Clarke, Benson, get in here.” Then he returned to his desk and sat down. McLaren didn’t keep visitor chairs in his office, so Margo and Marcus were forced to stay on their feet.

  Benson was the first to arrive. He was in his forties, almost completely grey, and talking about retirement. He liked to stay behind his desk. He had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of assassinations, which were his pet expertise.

  Clark sauntered in, his hands in his pockets and a scowl on his face. Marcus couldn’t figure out why McLaren had called him in, unless it was to irritate the crap out of him. Then he remembered: Clark was their official LA liaison. So he had a right to be there.

  McLaren looked at Margo. “Talk to me. Who’s after him?”

  “Oh, they’re not after him,” Margo said, lowering the bullet and sliding her glasses down her nose. “At least, not anymore. As Marcus told you, this was a professional hit…well, a professional shot. There was an expert behind the sights, so it’s probably someone known to us.” She held up the bullet. “This is a standard three-oh-eight Winchester, but from the scratches around the base, I would bet my monthly
salary that the cartridge was a limited edition boutique manufacture.”

  “You mean someone made it by hand?” McLaren qualified.

  “If he left his casing behind and I could get a look at it, I would be able to confirm that. The casing will have crimping marks on it.” She gave a tiny grimace. “Although if the shooter is as good as I think he is, he would have policed his brass.”

  “What makes you think he’s so good?” Clarke asked.

  Margo explained the details of the shooting, using slightly more technical jargon than Marcus had used to outline it for McLaren.

  Benson listened carefully, nodding, as she went through it. “Four hundred yards,” he ruminated, scratching at his hair. “Snipers don’t like three-oh-eights and will avoid them when they can because they have a greater drop off than anything else, over a long range. But four hundred yards, if he was good, wouldn’t have raised a drop of sweat. He would have compensated for that.”

  “And the wind and the crowd,” Margo concluded. “Plus, his target was three inches across. It was a difficult shot for a Paratus.”

  Benson raised his brow. “You figure he was covert?”

  “The security in the City National building is pretty tight,” Clark pointed out. “He’d have to pass as a civilian on business to get through.”

  “So, the Paratus. That fits,” Benson agreed.

  “The Paratus – that’s the one that breaks down?” Marcus asked.

  “The DRD Paratus modular semi-automatic carbine,” Margo told him softly. “It’s not technically a sniper rifle, although it was designed to be one. A good sniper would only use it if they needed to be subversive, which applies to your man.”

  “Benson, who do you figure did it?” McLaren asked.

  Benson scratched at his hair again, ruffling it. “One of maybe ten – or more. I could narrow it down except that he missed.”

  “He aimed to miss,” Marcus replied. “The portion of chair back that was visible was a few inches across, which is a lot smaller than my head or chest, and he didn’t hit any civilians. He took out the bull’s-eye, first shot, and he didn’t use his spares.”

  “It was technically a difficult shot, you agree?” Margo asked Benson.

  “I suppose,” he said. “You know ballistics better than me. I know the shooters.”

  “I believe there are only two who could have made the shot,” Margo replied, “and John Rain, one of the possibilities, is in Changi prison doing fifteen years. That leaves just one.”

  Benson laughed. “You’re not serious, are you? He hasn’t stepped foot in the United States, ever, that we know of. He prefers to operate in Europe and the Middle East.”

  “That doesn’t exclude him taking a job here,” Margo replied.

  “Who is he?” McLaren asked.

  “The Whisper,” Benson said. “He’s good. Very, very good. I’d put him in the top five snipers in the world. The other four have all been identified and their MO analyzed to death. No one knows who The Whisper is, so that makes him highly valuable to the sort of people interested in discretion. Plus, he doesn’t have a pattern. They’ve never been able to find a routine MO he uses. The kills that have been credited to him are simply amazing. It’s believed he was the one that took out the German President three years ago and that shot was unbelievable – a car on the move on the autobahn, probably going better than a hundred and twenty, and they figured The Whisper was sited across the river. He took out the side window and the President’s temple.”

  There was a small silence while they absorbed the information. Marcus felt a stirring of admiration for the guy. He was a killer, but so was everyone standing in the room with him right now – including himself. The skill of the shot was astonishing. It took snipers years of practice to get good, then hours of practice to stay good.

  “He does very dirty work and does it well,” Benson added. “And now this, the Paratus, a kill in the U.S., and if you’re right, he took money to miss.” Benson shook his head. “Most of the really good snipers have an ego to match. They wouldn’t want to deliberately miss because it would impact their score of perfect shots and it might get out that missing the shot was poor craftsmanship, not part of the deal.”

  “So, is this a message, then?” McLaren asked.

  “Why the fuck would they pick Anderson to send their message?” Clarke added.

  Marcus ignored him. So did McLaren, who kept his gaze on Margo and Benson.

  “It…might be,” Benson said. “There are very few possible reasons for deliberately missing and that is one. It could also be a stick in the ants’ nest.”

  “Us? He’s coming after us?” Clarke asked, sounding affronted.

  “There’s not enough information to speculate,” McLaren decided. “We need more. Which means you get a set of dogs, Anderson, so we can collect something more than a bullet next time he calls.”

  “Like hell!” Marcus shot back. “I’m supposed to be blending in with the locals. I’m going to look real fucking obvious with two suits tailing me the length of Surfrider Beach!”

  He could see McLaren was girding himself to say no, so he jumped in first to deflect. “Besides,” he added, “This isn’t our jurisdiction. We should be handing this over to the FBI.”

  McLaren got to his feet. “No, this is our ball. We’ll run with it.”

  “The G-Men will love that,” Marcus shot back.

  “They won’t be hearing it from me,” McLaren said, “or anyone else in this room.” He’d stated it flat-out. Just like that. Marcus stared at McLaren, wondering if he was really that stupid, or if he genuinely thought he was demonstrating the power of his position. There were codes and statutes stating very clearly the CIA could not conduct intelligence operations on US soil. McLaren was walking a razor thin line.

  But before he could say so, McLaren spoke. “It technically falls into Homeland Security’s area, anyway.” As if that was justification enough.

  “Then who the fuck are you working for?” Marcus demanded. “Who am I working for? This isn’t the way to do business.”

  McLaren glanced at the others. “Clear the room, thanks,” he said shortly. “Anderson, you stay. Everyone else, out. Shut the door behind you, thank you.”

  The glass door swung shut with a pneumatic hiss, closing Marcus off from the rest of the world. He looked at McLaren expectantly, bracing himself.

  McLaren rested his fingertips on the desk. Marcus was amazed he could find free desk space to do it. “Take the security, Anderson. You’ll thank me if this Whisper comes back at you.”

  “He won’t. Not with his rifle. I think he’s reaching out.”

  “To you?” The two words were brimming with contempt.

  Marcus kept a stranglehold on his temper. He gave it a count of ten. Then: “That’s all you’re going to do? Put watch dogs on me?”

  “What would you like me to do? Call out the national guard?”

  “Give it to the FBI,” Marcus shot back. “Let them do their job. They’re good at it.”

  “I’ve given you all the justification I’m going to on that one. Go be a beach bum and let us do our jobs.”

  I’m trying to do mine, Marcus thought. He pushed his hands into his pockets where his fists didn’t show. “Okay, fine. It’s your call about the FBI.”

  “I’m glad you see it that way,” McLaren said dryly.

  “But forget about the goons. I don’t want protection and if you assign it I’ll ditch them the first chance I get.”

  McLaren had read Marcus’ confidential file, so he would know he had the experience to shake loose even the most persistent tail. But Marcus added the kicker just to drive the point home. “Isn’t Robert Oppie running the local bureau these days?” He knew Bob Oppie well and knew damned well his current assignment was running the central L.A. FBI office.

  McLaren’s expression could have melted steel. He sat down and shoved his chair violently toward the desk. “Get out. Go home. Rusticate on your precious bea
ch. If this Whisper does come after you again, you had better by God bring him in.”

  A threat for a threat. Fair enough. Marcus stepped out of the office and let the door swing shut again. He felt sweaty, sticky and in need of a shower … or to slide under some waves.

  Margo was at her desk, with both Clarke and Benson standing around it. Marcus stepped up beside her and she swiveled her gaze to take him in. Then she looked back at the other two. There was a message in that direct look, but Marcus didn’t know yet what it meant.

  Benson was talking. “I’ve heard and read rumors that The Whisper has taken U.S. government contracts. If he’s never worked in the States that means he got the contracts from us.” He shook his head.

  “That bothers you, Peter?” Margo asked Benson. “It’s not like we’ve never contracted out work before.”

  “We should be using our own resources first,” he said firmly.

  Marcus felt a gentle, barely there touch on his thigh. It could only be Margo. Benson and Clarke were on the other side of the desk.

  “Why use our people?” Marcus asked Benson. “So they can bungle the job in-house? You rated The Whisper in the top five best in the world. Hell, I’d blow the branch budget to secure his services if it meant I could guarantee the job gets done, and that’s what you’d get with The Whisper. A guarantee.”

  Benson tilted his head a bit. “Is that the sound of adoration I hear in your voice, Marcus?”

  Marcus shrugged. “Why not?” He glanced down at the desk briefly. Margo’s fingertips were resting against the bullet. “There’s artistry in any skill that has been polished to perfection and this guy has it in spades,” Marcus said.

  Benson laughed. “You’re getting a boner over a man you haven’t even met yet.”

  Clarke curled up the corner of his mouth in a sneer. “From what I hear, that isn’t an issue for Anderson.”

  Marcus looked at Benson and grinned. “He is not speaking from experience.”