Jack Ryan 12 - The Teeth of the Tiger (2 page)

The TS folder went up again in the M-2's hands. “He says here you saved his bacon in that ambush.”

“Sir, nobody looks smart getting into an ambush in the first place. Mr. Hardesty was reconnoitering forward with Corporal Ward while I was getting the satellite radio set up. The bad guys were in a pretty clever little spot, but they tipped their hand. They opened up too soon on Mr. Hardesty, missed him with their first burst, and we maneuvered uphill around them. They didn't have good enough security out. Gunny Sullivan took his squad right, and when he got in position, I took my bunch up the middle. It took a total of ten to fifteen minutes, and then Gunny Sullivan got our target, took him right in the head from ten meters. We wanted to take him alive, but that wasn't possible the way things played out.” Caruso shrugged. Superiors could generate officers, but not the exigencies of the moment, and the man had had no intention of spending time in American captivity, and it was hard to put the bag on someone like that. The final score had been one badly shot-up Marine, and sixteen dead Arabs, plus two live captives for the Intel pukes to chat with. It had ended up being more productive than anyone had expected. The Afghans were brave enough, but they weren't madmen
—or, more precisely, they chose martyrdom only on their own terms.

“Lessons learned?” Broughton asked.

“There is no such thing
as too much training, sir, or being in too good a shape. The real thing is a lot messier than exercises. Like I said, the Afghans are brave enough, but they are not trained. And you can never know which ones are going to slug it out, and which ones are going to cave. They taught us at
Quantico
that you have to trust your instincts, but they don't issue instincts to you, and you can't always be sure if you're listening to the right voice or not.” Caruso shrugged, but he just
went ahead and spoke his mind. “I guess it worked out okay for me and my Marines, but I can't really say I know why.”

“Don't think too much, Captain. When the shit hits the fan, you don't have time to think it all the way through. You think beforehand. It's in how you train your people, and assign responsibilities to them. You prepare your mind for action, but you never think you know what form the action is going to take. In any case, you did everything pretty well. You impressed this Hardesty guy—and he is a fairly serious customer. That's how this happened,” Broughton concluded.

“Excuse me, sir?”

“The Agency wants to talk to you,” the M-2 announced. “They're doing a talent hunt, and your name came up.”

“To do what, sir?”

“Didn't tell me that. They're looking for people who can work in the field. I don't think it's espionage. Probably the paramilitary side of the house. I'd guess that's the new counterterror shop. I can't say I'm pleased to lose a promising young Marine. However, I have no say in the matter. You are free to decline the offer, but you do have to go up and talk to them beforehand.”

“I see.” He didn't, really.

“Maybe somebody reminded them of another ex-Marine who worked out fairly well up there . . .” Broughton half observed.

“Uncle Jack, you mean? Jesus—excuse me, sir, but I've been dodging that ever since I showed up at the
Basic
School
. I'm just one more Marine O-3, sir. I'm not asking for anything else.”

“Good,” was all Broughton felt like saying. He saw before him a very promising young officer who'd read the Marine Corps Officer's Guide front to back, and hadn't forgotten any of the important parts. If anything he was a touch too earnest, but he'd been the same way once himself. “Well, you're due up there in two hours. Some guy named Pete Alexander, another ex-Special Forces guy. Helped run the
Afghanistan
operation for the Agency back in the 1980s. Not a bad guy, so I've heard, but he doesn't want to grow his own talent. Watch your wallet, Captain,” he said in dismissal.

“Yes, sir,” Caruso promised. He came to his feet, into the position of attention.

The M-2 graced his guest with a smile. “Semper
Fi, son.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Caruso made his way out of the office, nodded to the gunny, never said a word to the  half-colonel, who hadn't bothered looking up, and headed downstairs, wondering what the hell he was getting into.

HUNDREDS OF
miles away, another man named Caruso was thinking the same thing. The FBI had made its reputation as one of
America
's premier law-enforcement agencies by investigating interstate kidnappings, beginning soon after passage of the Lindbergh Law in the 1930s. Its success in closing such cases had largely put an end to kidnapping-for-money
—at least for smart criminals. The Bureau closed
every single one of those cases, and professional criminals had finally caught on that this form of crime was a sucker's game. And so it had remained for years, until kidnappers with objectives other than money had decided to delve into it.

And those people were much harder to catch.

Penelope Davidson had vanished on her way to kindergarten that very morning. Her parents had called the local police within an hour after her disappearance, and soon thereafter the local sheriff's office had called the FBI. Procedure allowed the FBI to get involved as soon as it was possible for the victim to have been taken across a state line.
Georgetown
,
Alabama
, was just half an hour from the
Mississippi
state line, and so the
Birmingham
office of the FBI had immediately jumped on the case like a cat on a mouse. In FBI nomenclature, a kidnapping case is called a “7,” and nearly every agent in the office got into his car and headed southwest for the small farming-market town. In the mind of each agent, however, was the dread of a fool's errand. There was a clock on kidnapping cases. Most victims were thought to be sexually exploited and killed within four or six hours. Only a miracle could get the child back alive that quickly, and miracles didn't happen often.

But most of them were men with wives and children themselves, and
so they worked as though there were a chance. The office ASAC—Assistant Special Agent in Charge—was the first to talk to the local sheriff, whose name was Paul Turner. The Bureau regarded him as an amateur in the business of investigations, out of his depth, and Turner thought so as well. The thought of a raped and murdered little girl in his jurisdiction turned his stomach, and he welcomed federal assistance. Photos were passed out to every man with a badge and a gun. Maps were consulted. The local cops and FBI Special Agents headed to the area between the Davidson house and the public school to which she'd walked five blocks every morning for two months. Everyone who lived on that pathway was interviewed. Back in
Birmingham
, computer checks were made of possible sex offenders living within a hundred-mile radius, and agents and
Alabama
state troopers were sent to interview them, too. Every house was searched, usually with permission of the owner, but often enough without, because the local judges took a stern view of kidnapping.

For Special Agent Dominic Caruso, it wasn't his first major case, but it was his first “7,” and while he was unmarried and childless, the thought of a missing child caused his blood first to chill, and then to boil. Her “official” kindergarten photo showed blue eyes and blond hair turning brown, and a cute little smile. This “7” wasn't about money. The family was working class and ordinary. The father was a lineman for the local electric co-op, the mother worked part-time as a nurse's aide in the county hospital. Both were churchgoing Methodists, and neither, on first inspection, seemed a likely suspect for child abuse, though that would be looked into, too. A senior agent from the Birmingham Field Office was skilled in profiling, and his initial read was frightening: this unknown subject could be a serial kidnapper and killer, someone who found children sexually attractive, and who knew that the safest way to commit this crime was to kill the victim afterward.

He was out there somewhere, Caruso knew. Dominic Caruso was a young agent, hardly a year out of
Quantico
, but already in his second field assignment—unmarried FBI agents had no more choice in picking their assignments than a sparrow in a hurricane. His initial assignment had been in
Newark
,
New Jersey
, all of seven months, but
Alabama
was more to his taste. The weather was often miserable, but it wasn't a beehive like that dirty city. His assignment now was to patrol the area west of
Georgetown
, to scan and wait for some hard bit of information. He wasn't experienced enough to be an effective interviewer. The skill took years to develop, though Caruso thought he was pretty smart, and his college degree was in psychology.

Look for a car with a little girl in it,
he told himself,
one
not
in a car seat?
he wondered. It might give her a better way to look out of the car, and maybe wave for help . . . So, no, the subject would probably have her tied up, cuffed, or wrapped with duct tape, and probably gagged.
Some little girl, helpless and terrified.
The thought made his hands tighten on the wheel. The radio crackled.

“Birmingham Base to all '7' units. We have a report that the '7' suspect might be driving a white utility van, probably a Ford, white in color, a little dirty.
Alabama
tags. If you see a vehicle matching that description, call it in, and we'll get the local PD to check it out.”

Which meant, don't flash your gum-ball light and pull him over yourself unless you have to, Caruso thought. It was time to do some thinking.

If I were one of those creatures, where would I be . . . ?
Caruso slowed down. He thought . . . a place with decent road access. Not a main road per se . . . a decent secondary road, with a turn off to something more private. Easy in, easy out. A place where the neighbors couldn't see or hear what he's up to . . .

He picked up his microphone. “Caruso to
Birmingham
Base.”

“Yeah, Dominic,” responded the agent on the radio desk. The FBI radios were encrypted, and couldn't be listened into by anyone without a good descrambler.

“The white van. How solid is that?”

“An elderly woman says that when she was out getting her paper, she saw a little girl, right description, talking to some guy next to a white van. The possible subject is male Caucasian, undetermined age, no other description. Ain't much, Dom, but it's all we got,” Special Agent Sandy Ellis reported.

“How many child abusers in the area?” Caruso asked next.

“A total of nineteen on the computer. We got people talking to all of them. Nothing developed yet. All we got, man.”

“Roger,
Sandy
. Out.”

More driving, more scanning. He wondered if this was anything like his brother Brian had experienced in
Afghanistan
: alone, hunting the enemy . . . He started looking for dirt paths off the road, maybe for one with recent tire tracks.

He looked down at the wallet-sized photo again. A sweet-faced little girl, just learning the ABC's. A child for whom the world has always been a safe place, ruled by Mommy and Daddy, who went to Sunday school and made caterpillars out of egg cartons and pipe cleaners, and learned to sing “Jesus loves me, this I know / 'Cause the Bible tells me so . . .” His head swiveled left and right. There, about a hundred yards away, a dirt road leading into the woods. As he slowed, he saw that the path took a gentle S-curve, but the trees were thin, and he could see . . .

. . . cheap frame house . . . and next to it . . . the corner of a van . . . ? But this one was more beige than white . . .

Well, the little old lady who'd seen the little girl and the truck . . . how far away had it been . . . sunlight or shadows . . . ? So many things, so many inconstants, so many variables. As good as the
FBI
Academy
was, it couldn't prepare you for everything
—hell, not even close to everything. That's what they told you, too—told you that you had to trust your instinct and experience . . .

But Caruso had hardly a year's experience.

Still . . .

He stopped the car.

“Caruso to
Birmingham
Base.”

“Yeah, Dominic,” Sandy Ellis responded.

Caruso radioed in his location. “I'm going 10-7 to walk in and take a look.”

“Roger that, Dom. Do you request backup?”

“Negative,
Sandy
. It's probably nothing, just going to knock on the door and talk to the occupant”

“Okay, I'll stand by.”

Caruso didn't have a portable radio
—that was for local cops, not the Bureau—and so was now out of touch, except for his cell phone. His personal side arm was a Smith & Wesson 1076, snug in its holster on his right hip. He stepped out of the car, and closed the door without latching it, to avoid making noise. People always turned to see what made the noise of a slammed car door.

He was wearing a darker than olive green suit, a fortunate circumstance, Caruso thought, heading right. First he'd look at the van. He walked normally, but his eyes were locked on the windows of the shabby house, halfway hoping to see a face, but, on reflection, glad that none appeared.

The Ford van was about six years old, he judged. Minor dings and dents on the bodywork. The driver had backed it in. That put the sliding door close to the house, the sort of thing a carpenter or plumber might do. Or a man moving a small, resisting body. He kept his right hand free, and his coat unbuttoned. Quick-draw was something every cop in the world practiced, often in front of a mirror, though only a fool fired as part of the motion, because you just couldn't hit anything that way.

Caruso took his time. The window was down on the driver-side door. The interior was almost entirely empty, bare, unpainted metal floor, the spare tire and jack . . . and a large roll of duct tape . . .

There was a lot of that stuff around. The free end of the roll was turned down, as though to make sure he'd be able to pull some off the roll without having to pick at it with his fingernails. A lot of people did that, too. There was, finally, a throw rug, tucked
—no,
taped, he saw, to the floor, just behind the right-side passenger seat . . . and was that some tape dangling from the metal seat framing? What might that mean?

Why there?
Caruso wondered, but suddenly the skin on his forearms started tingling. It was a first for that sensation. He'd never made an arrest himself, had not yet been involved in a major felony case, at least not to any sort of conclusion. He'd worked fugitives in
Newark
, briefly, and made a total of three collars, always with another, more experienced agent to take the lead. He was more experienced now, a tiny bit seasoned . . . But not all that much, he reminded himself.