The Rescue(13)
“Rich is dead,” he said.
“I gathered that much.”
“He was shot in the parking garage stairwell. Two bullets to the right temple. Spaced less than an inch apart,” said Jay, raising an eyebrow.
“Professional.”
“His wallet is missing, and his communications rig was found smashed on the steps next to his head.”
“The wallet’s a dead end,” said Gunther. “Fake driver’s license and a few preloaded credit cards.”
“I’m more concerned about the earpiece.”
“If Decker heard any of our chatter, it’s fair to say he knows we’re not Russian,” said Gunther. “Beyond that, I’m not worried.”
“He’s probably narrowed things down a lot further,” said Jay. “They found Rich facedown on the stairs—shirtless.”
“Shirtless?”
“His shirt had been removed and thrown down the stairs,” said Jay. “Our LAPD contact reported an upper-shoulder tattoo.”
“Let me guess,” said Gunther. “SEAL trident or bone frog.”
“The latter.”
“Decker would recognize that right away. It’s a fair assumption that he’s having serious doubts about the root cause of his spectacular fall from grace. We need to find him before he starts digging around on his own.”
“We can activate the full surveillance and detection network available to us in the greater Los Angeles metro area,” said Jay. “Shake all of the trees.”
“It’s probably going to take more than that. I’ll request additional assets,” said Gunther. “Why don’t you take a short walk while I make the call.”
“Good luck.”
“Better me than you, right?”
“Something like that,” Jay said before walking toward the parking lot.
Gunther pulled out his phone and stared at the touch screen for a moment before pressing a series of numbers known only to him. Things were about to get complicated.
CHAPTER NINE
Jacob Harcourt disconnected the call and walked over to the cocktail cabinet built into the cherry wall next to his desk. He poured a sorely needed early-afternoon bourbon. The news from Gunther Ross was disturbing on many levels. Decker’s stubborn insistence on not dying represented a clear and present danger to the scheme he had meticulously cultivated for close to a decade.
He never should have let Frist talk him out of the idea of driving a truck filled with explosives into the La Jacinta Inn motor court, vaporizing Decker and his team instantly. Then again, nobody could have predicted that Decker would survive multiple professionally executed attempts on his life. The man had proven to be unstoppable, which scared Harcourt.
If Decker had caught even the faintest whiff of something rotten, like the circumstances suggested, he’d keep sniffing until he found the source. The sooner they found and killed him, the better.
Harcourt would immediately deploy a second black-ops team to Los Angeles to help with the Decker situation, in addition to diverting every electronic surveillance asset available in the country to support them. Combined with Aegis’s local surveillance network of law enforcement and private entities, they’d have the city electronically locked down within twelve hours.
Facial-recognition software would scour LAPD surveillance cameras, traffic feeds, and private security cameras linked to security firms. Digital eavesdroppers would filter internet keyword searches. A very expensive cell phone surveillance package provided by an unnamed alphabet agency would sift through millions of conversations, listening for trigger words. They’d wait for Decker to make a mistake—and he would. Decker wasn’t the type to sit still for very long.
All the more reason to move on him quickly. Harcourt was little more than a week away from seeing his life’s work come to fruition. One lousy week—and the Solntsevskaya Bratva screwed up again. He shouldn’t have involved the Russians any further. Their first mistake had been bad enough.
He’d spoken at length with the Bratva’s legal team, going over the plan, and they still screwed it up. The US attorney’s key evidence against the Russians would be dismissed during the trial. Harcourt had seen to that. Decker was the last remaining witness who could testify about the veracity of the documents collected by World Recovery Group. The rest of his team had been eliminated or effectively silenced.
The judge would grant the defense’s motion to dismiss the case based on a lack of evidence. Decker’s testimony would be too biased to be credible, leaving the case without merit. A life-changing sum of money had been deposited in an account owned by the judge to ensure that dismissal.
Instead, the Bratva’s attorney jumps the gun and convinces the US attorney to drop the case before it goes to trial, forcing Harcourt to take drastic and possibly traceable measures to once again deal with Decker. A hastily arranged operation that ended in a temporary setback. One he now had to explain to a very nervous politician.
He dialed a private number, barely getting the cell phone to his ear before Senator Gerald Frist’s impatient voice broke through.
“Is it done?”
“We hit a small snag,” said Harcourt. “Apparently our friend still has a fan or two there. We were moving on him at a mall in Little Tokyo when all hell broke loose. One of my operatives was killed, and Decker vanished. I had no choice but to pull my teams out before the police arrived.”