Fear No Evil(Alex Cross #29)(51)

“Not if you can help it,” Big DD said.

Vincente ran to him. They turned the men around, zip-tied their wrists, put duct tape over their mouths, and hustled them to the pickup.

After Big DD restrained their ankles, Vincente got a tarp, covered the prisoners, and slapped twice on the hood of the pickup. Purdy threw the truck in reverse and began to back away from the carnage.

“Pull out, Cort,” Butler said.

“Not yet” came the reply a split second before the driver in the third Escalade jumped out and tried to aim an AK-47 at the retreating pickup.

Cortland shot him through the side of his chest.

“Now I’m pulling out,” Cortland said.

“Pickup in three hours for you, two for me,” Butler said and ran in a crouch to his backpack, where he began dismantling his weapon and the spotting scope.

Three minutes later, he was heading northeast across a broken desert landscape toward his pickup spot some six miles away. The sun was barely above the horizon but he could already feel the inferno building.





Chapter





57


Boston



John Sampson, Ned Mahoney, and I drove north from Logan Airport the following morning. Forty minutes later we pulled into a campus of anonymous concrete-and-glass office buildings near the New Hampshire border.

The largest building on the campus sat toward the back and was shaded by towering spruce trees. We parked near the trees and got out, knowing we had ten minutes before our appointment.

“I was impressed with the memo and supporting information Bree got us,” Mahoney said as we walked. “I still am. Damn impressive.”

I smiled in agreement. Bree had taken an offhand comment by her boss at Bluestone Group and in a matter of hours had gathered enough information to warrant phone calls and an early flight north.

“We’re still on something of a fishing trip,” Sampson said, rubbing at his wounded side and still limping slightly as we reached the front door.

“But this is a good pond, I think,” Mahoney said.

We entered and found ourselves in a tight lobby with steel walls on three sides and bulletproof glass on the fourth. Behind it sat a woman in her forties with the biceps of a professional arm wrestler. The nameplate on her blue polo shirt read RIGGS.

“Can I help you, gentlemen?” Riggs asked.

We held up our credentials. Mahoney said, “We have an appointment to see Steven Vance and Ryan Malcomb.”

She smiled. “You are expected, gentlemen.”

After asking to copy our credentials, which we passed through a tray, Riggs buzzed us into a larger reception with a stacked-granite weeping wall that gave the room a pleasant sound. Beside the wall hung a small, understated logo: PALADIN INC. superimposed over a faint number 12.

Bree had explained it to us in the summary of her research. In twelfth-century French literature, the paladins, or twelve peers, were said to be the elite protectors and agents of King Charlemagne, comparable to the Knights of the Round Table in the Arthurian legends.

Paladin Inc. had been launched five years before by Vance, a veteran Silicon Valley CEO, and Malcomb, a brilliant tech wizard who’d started and sold four companies before the age of forty. The focus of Vance and Malcomb’s most recent venture involved data mining.

The company had corporate and U.S. government contracts based on ingenious algorithms written by Malcomb that allowed Paladin to scour and sift through monstrous amounts of data at an astonishingly fast pace. The system had yielded investigative targets of interest to various U.S. law enforcement agencies and private security operations like Bluestone Group, all of which increasingly looked to Paladin because of the company’s unrivaled accuracy.

A door opened on the other side of the weeping wall. A short redheaded woman with a bowl haircut exited; she was wearing a baby-blue puffy jacket despite the August heat outside and looked like a cruise-ship passenger who’d just been told there was a norovirus outbreak onboard.

“I’m Sheila Farr, Paladin’s legal counsel,” she said stiffly. “Unfortunately, Mr. Malcomb’s mother has had a bad fall in her Palo Alto home and he’s on his way there. But Steve will see you now.”





Chapter





58


Mexico City



Later that morning in the Mexican capital, Matthew Butler went to the window on the empty fourth floor of a building at the corner of Calle de Venustiano and José María Pino Suárez. With latex gloves on, he moved the window shade just enough to see diagonally across the intersection to the Mexican National Supreme Court of Justice.

“Highest law in the land,” Butler said.

“Traffic?” M said in his ear.

“No less than any Tuesday when it’s already blistering hot out at seven a.m.”

“Timing has to be perfect for the statement to have impact.”

“It does,” Butler said. “We good?”

“You are go.”

“Roll,” Butler said into his jawbone microphone.

“Rolling,” Vincente said. “Forty seconds out.”

Purdy said, “Walking at my target.”

“Squared up on mine,” Cortland said.

Butler took his eyes off the street and looked over two windows to the profile of his sniper. Cortland held a powerful, accurate, multi-shot air gun attached to a small compressor. He had the barrel and the first two inches of his telescopic sight aimed through slits he’d cut in the blind.