The Rescue(76)

“I have a file,” said Aleman. “It’s been an obsession of mine.”

“Mine, too.”

“I can imagine.”

“No. You can’t.”

“Sorry. You’re right,” said Aleman. “We need to go below now.”

“The Russians are behind this somehow,” said Decker, testing him. He wasn’t about to descend into Aleman’s pit without some sense of what this traitor knew. If Decker detected the slightest hint of treachery, he wouldn’t hesitate to go back on his words and kill him.

“The Russians were used—just like me.”

“Why do you think Aegis is involved?” said Decker, glancing at Pierce. “It was Jacob Harcourt’s idea to hire us in the first place.”

“I don’t know,” said Aleman. “But I managed to identify the man that served as my go-between with whoever was behind all of this.”

“Gunther Ross?”

“No,” he said. “Who’s Gunther Ross?”

“You better not be lying to me.”

Aleman took a few steps toward him. There was no defiance to this gesture. Only surety, from what he could tell. “I’ve never heard the name Gunther Ross,” he said. “My handler went by the name of Chris Barton, and they killed him with all the rest, from what I can tell.”

“Killed the rest?”

“I counted thirty-one accidental deaths or unresolved disappearances. All people with some kind of past connection to an Aegis subsidiary company. My handler was one of them, which is why I started to look into it. Someone wanted all ties to the Steele disaster severed.”

“That’s too many people for just the Hemet operation,” said Pierce.

“My guess is that a lot of them were involved in the rest of it,” said Aleman.

“The rest of it being the family murders,” said Decker.

“That’s what I think. I just don’t have any direct proof. Just two years of staring at this day in and day out, trying to make sense of the nightmare I unleashed.”

“How much did they pay you?” said Pierce.

“I never asked for money. I told you, they threatened my family.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” said Decker.

“It wasn’t about the money.”

“But you took money?” said Decker, his hands tightening on the rifle.

“They insisted. I didn’t have a choice, and I knew they’d never pay.”

“You didn’t get paid?”

“They paid a hundred thousand up front,” said Aleman.

“What did they promise on the back end?”

“One million,” said Aleman. “I knew that number was BS.”

“They never paid?”

“No,” said Aleman. “They hit my house the same night as everyone else’s.”

“But you had already sent your family away,” said Decker, lowering his rifle.

“Yeah.”

“You know what happened to my family, right?”

Aleman nodded.

“Why you?” said Pierce. “Why did Aegis approach you?”

“I honestly don’t know. I wish I did. Not that it would matter.”

“You didn’t have some kind of massive debt or bad investment hanging over you?” said Decker.

“No. Everything was—perfect,” said Aleman, his voice cracking. “I don’t know why they picked me. It never made sense.”

As much as Decker wanted to hold Aleman responsible for everything, he couldn’t. What he’d said so far made sense, and unless Aleman had always been a practiced liar, he sounded sincerely remorseful.

“I think I know why,” said Decker. “They somehow knew you’d be on your own the night of the raid, watching over the rescue teams—and that you’d run when the house went up. They wanted you to escape the scene.”

“So they could kill me right away,” said Aleman. “Cutting the link to Aegis.”

“You were the last person they wanted in FBI custody,” said Decker.

A buzzing noise interrupted them.

“It’s the phone in my vest,” said Aleman. “Can I grab it?”

“You get a lot of calls out here?” said Decker.

“I manage the security system with a smartphone, using a wireless connection,” said Aleman. “There’s no cell coverage within ten miles of this place.”

“Go ahead. Just keep your hands off the rifle,” said Decker. “Actually. Brad. If you don’t mind?”

Aleman lifted the rifle off his shoulder by the sling and let Pierce take it.

“Can I check the phone now without getting shot?”

“Go ahead,” said Decker.

Aleman dug into a pouch mounted high on his plate carrier, retrieving the illuminated phone. He stared at the screen for a moment before pressing a few buttons.

“We have company,” said Aleman. “Multiple vehicles just passed through the gate.”

“How many?” said Decker.

“Eight.”

“How long until they get here?”

“I won’t know for sure until they hit the next sensor,” said Aleman. “But it’s five miles.”