“No one knows. I promise you many searches to do with W have been performed. You didn’t get a look at him before they took you to the basement?”
“No, and I had my back to the stairs immediately. Also, the lipstick camera that got your face ...” She paused to send him an apologetic glance, which he answered with a shrug. “... was not angled to reach the top of the stairs. It’s just a good thing I understood enough Russian to figure out the place was going to explode. Cyclops was so stupid and clueless about the flashing green light.”
“Cyclops?”
“I had to give him a name in my mind to make cursing him easier.”
“He died too easily.” Sam’s eyes turned dark at the reminder of what that guard had been doing to her. “Knowing W is Russian is more than we’ve had before now.”
“What do you think W has planned?”
Sounding more himself, Sam began sharing details of what had brought them to the mansion in South America. “Many special operations have focused on this elusive W. You said you believe Kovac is being pressured to do something for an upcoming event. That fits W’s MO based on past events. To be honest, I don’t think the Collector is still involved, especially at this point if he’s delivered the kidnapped victims. Finding out he’s been in the same location as W is new intel as well.”
Sam paused to jockey their position and get out of a slow pack of cars. “W has been rumored to drop barrels of money on something he wants badly. The Collector grabbing the senator would make sense.”
“What does W want with the senator?”
Sighing heavily, Sam sounded tired. “This senator has sworn to stop W. He’s pushed money to the military in this country just to locate and take down W. We believe W’s going to use the senator at his next terrorist attack this Saturday. Based on your information, it sounds like he’s planning it somewhere near the northeastern coast for the meeting with Phoebe to be the night before a terrorist attack.”
“Whoa, wait a minute.” Hallene waved her hand trying to slow down what Sam was saying. “Terrorist? I don’t understand. I thought you were just trying to extract a kidnapped victim.”
“We are. Keeping the senator safe is our first mission, but the man who captured him has been behind five attacks in as many different countries. For the last five years, he has toyed with every military in the world by executing an attack on the last Saturday of August at ten in the morning local time. You recall what happened in Baghdad at the end of August last year?”
“Yes. It was horrible. Thirty-eight people were killed, including two children.”
Nodding and deftly weaving the SUV through traffic, Sam said, “Hundreds more were wounded and maimed. We think he executed that attack as vengeance for a powerful man whose home was destroyed by a drone bomb. I can’t give more details. It’s classified and like following a chess game with pieces that are not visible until it’s time to make a move.”
Those were the monsters Sam hunted.
She dealt with monsters too, but on a different scale and in the civilian world. Hers weren’t after international fame, just innocent children.
The silence brought her back to what they’d been discussing. “I didn’t realize those annual attacks were related other than the media trying to show them as copycat acts.”
“That’s because we keep the details quiet just to avoid a real copycat causing even more harm and muddying our investigations. But this time, we were hoping to find the senator and maybe learn the identity of the man behind all this.”
“You never said why the intelligence community knows him as W.”
“Oh, there’s a barely alive victim hung near every attack and photos taken in case the media doesn’t see it before the big event. The body is stripped of clothes and a W is carved into the abdomen. That’s why intelligence has named the perpetrator W.”
No wonder Sam went along with her pushing him to join her. He was willing to put his life and his future on the line to find W.
Sam had stopped talking, but not because he was holding back. She’d come to understand that intense look meant he chewed on a thought.
“What are you thinking, Sam?”
“Not something specific. I’m just trying to make all these pieces fit. The senator. Phoebe. Kovac. The Collector. W. An arms dealer.”
“What arms dealer?”
“A guy I knew as Esteban. He and I escaped an enemy camp then went our separate ways, but he’d told me how to find him in the future through a cryptic message in a Miami newspaper. I watched for three months until I found it. He had set up shop again in Venezuela, South America, but he only sold to those of us protecting sovereignty for the US and their allies.”
She kept quiet as Sam made up his mind on what he’d say next.
“When we got a lead on the senator, we believed W was behind it. We had little time to plan. I suggested Esteban for our in-country arms supplier. I would never have doubted him. He had no family when I first knew him and said he avoided being close to people because of his line of work, but he must have had a change of heart during the last two years. The team who tortured and killed him left a picture of a woman and a small boy. The kid looked like Esteban. I’m not going to condemn him for trying to save a woman and his child, but the bottom line is that one is on me. They wanted our team, and the connection was someone I knew.”
She wouldn’t downplay what happened by saying it wasn’t his fault. Sam would not see it any other way. “Why were they after your team?”
“See, that’s a piece that doesn’t make sense.” He flipped his turn signal on, changing lanes and constantly watching his rearview mirror. “We moved so fast on that operation no one could have known. Someone had to be sitting on top of Esteban to know we’d been there. They left a note on him saying,One down then the final delivery. I keep turning that note over in my head and can’t make sense of it, not in context of the senator’s kidnapping.”
