The Tip of the Spear

By John Lavi

Ex-FBI special agent Ben Hawkins relentlessly tracks two killers wreaking havoc across the country but has to face off against the darkness roiling inside him. His compulsions drive him to the brink of losing his job as task force head before he barely has the chance to get going.

One of the killers he pursues, Sammy Gill, is on a hunt of his own to avenge the recent murder of his family. The pressing challenge to that mission is the small matter that Gill is in task force custody, legs chained to the floor of a cell. When he finally does break loose, he starts his spree of revenge with the crew of mobster Jimmy Morretti. He moves on to Morretti himself before reaching the frightening end of his search, a confrontation with the killer of his family.

Hawkins charges at breakneck speed toward that same end, along the way finding a surprising connection between the Morretti mob, the two killers he chases, and a shadowy terror organization with tentacles reaching into the far corners of the land. This is a gritty tale of hard-driving hunter-killers heading on a collision course with disaster.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638606260

Book preview

Prologue

He found Sid crumpled in a blood-drenched heap at the fence. He found Belle inside, at the base of the stairs, a pool of blood spreading under her body. In dread, he stared up at the second floor.

Slowly, he trudged up the steps and into the room, eyes adjusting to the darkness. He turned toward the closet, hesitating at the door. Trembling, he entered and pulled the chain for the overhead bulb.

Blood had spattered on the walls and the hanging clothes. At the back of the closet, they were sprawled in a heap, drenched in blood. His little girl, eyes staring up at the ceiling, had a huge gash in her chest. She was in the arms of his wife, whose head lolled to the side, a trickle of blood running from the corner of her mouth, her eyes as lifeless as his daughter’s. He realized what had happened: the killer had plunged a knife all the way through his daughter and into his wife.

He glanced over to his right, at a lump on the floor. Pulling up the coat on top of the lump, he revealed a body underneath, that of his son, a huge-bladed knife embedded in the boy’s chest. Shaking, Sammy Gill threw back his head. A wail filled the tiny closet, reverberating, gale-force, the shriek of a banshee, and in some distant part of his mind, he realized the wail was his.

Chapter 1

His long sleeves were drenched in blood, now all dried and stiff. Blood was on his shirtfront and slacks too. He had used his bowie knife, a very satisfying bloodletting, but had failed to put down the target. He wasn’t used to failure. A giant of immense strength and cunning, he made his living taking down targets.

Nor was he used to the need for rescue. This time, he had to make his way to a prearranged extraction point, where the man standing with him in the kitchen had picked him up and brought him here to this so-called safe house in Houston’s Fifth Ward. In the corner of the room lay a case full of gear, which they had put together for him.

His cell rang—no doubt the call he had been expecting. He waved his rescuer off to the front room.

You did not get him, said his phone contact, stating the obvious, as usual.

No, replied the killer.

You slaughtered his family instead. Garza is not happy, because Morretti is not happy—Morretti who hired you and Garza who went to a lot of trouble for you.

Morretti was the New York crime boss who had hired him to kill the target, Garza, Morretti’s business partner who had helped him run a gauntlet of cops and FBI agents at IAH. Just when the trap at the airport was closing on him, Garza’s crew sprang him. That had turned a little violent.

You have the equipment? continued the contact, the man who worked with the mob but was not in the mob and who had a whole other reason for being on the phone with him.

Yes. I have gone through the case, and everything’s there.

Outside, there was the sound of crunching gravel, and the screen door out front slammed, indicating that his rescuer had fled.

I think you can expect Garza to make a move against you.

The giant pulled the Glock from the waistband at the small of his back. I think he just did.

_______

Straight from JFK, the old, weathered man in a black windbreaker carried his small overnight bag into the lobby of the Crowne Plaza JFK. He wore an open-collar white shirt and black slacks and had dyed black hair and ramrod-straight military bearing. He joined his team. They shook hands and proceeded to the elevators. Unlike him, his team members wore blazers, along with slacks and open-collar shirts. One of them was stocky, muscular, and red-haired. The other was tall, trim, and black-haired. They looked like athletes, moving smoothly, with assurance.

They entered their suite. A laptop attached to a large-screen monitor sat on a table in the middle of the main room. The tall one tapped a key, bringing up a color picture on-screen of a man who looked to be in his midthirties. There was a description in the caption: Dark-complected, 6 feet 2 inches, 220 pounds. Weapons proficient. Dangerous.

That was the description when the FBI captured him today, said the tall one. No pictures existed of him until the FBI found a few in the raid on his house, which in typical type A fashion they scanned.

We intercepted them, of course, added the short one. Nice of them to scan them for us.

The man in the black windbreaker studied the picture on-screen. Where is he?

Houston, replied the tall one. Custody of the FBI.

Tell me about the FBI profile.

They have a lot of it now, said the stubby one. Accomplished killer—knives, pistols, submachine guns, garrote.

Do they have an inkling of his true origin?

Shaking his head, the tall one replied, Just the legend Gill puts out—claiming Italian heritage, Gill short for Galanti or Gilelmi, something.

Clever, said the man in the black windbreaker. Close to the real. Moving away from the monitor, the old man took a seat. The others followed suit. Tell me about this latest situation.

You know the accident that started it all, said the tall one. Teacher ran over a child who happened to be the son of mobster Jimmy Morretti. A day later, that teacher disappeared—no big mystery. Presumed murdered by Morretti. Enter Sammy Gill. Like a ghost, he starts to wreak havoc back on Morretti’s people as if in revenge for the teacher. Hangs a mobster who was probably involved in that teacher’s murder.

Hung him!

With electrical cord, from the light fixture. He then wipes out an entire Morretti crew in a shoot-out at a Queens body shop. Wipes out the Delacroce mob operation in San Fran—first infiltrating the perimeter security, then shooting up the house and everyone in it.

So he’s coast-to-coast! added the short one. The mob, they can’t sit back and let this go on. They have to strike back. Morretti demands it. But how do you strike a ghost? Easy. You hire another one.

Cariti, said the tall one, their own assassin.

That’s what I want to hear about, muttered the old man in the black windbreaker. I want to hear about him.

Yes, said the tall man, he of the butcher knife and milky eye, Antoine Cariti, giant from Corsica. Morretti hired Cariti to get Gill, so Cariti began tracking him.

Please—clenching his jaw in frustration, the old man glared at them—I just want to know what happened yesterday! A whole history of the Roman Empire I don’t need!

Yesterday, he got to Gill’s family. On the table, the tall one laid out intercepted crime scene photos of Gill’s butchered wife and children. For a moment, the three of them stared silently at the grisly images.

And Cariti escaped, muttered the old man, finally. Who caught Gill?

Big black guy, former FBI: Ben Hawkins—not held in esteem by a lot of those people, has drinking problems, problems with authority.

The man in the black windbreaker chuckled. I like him already.

But from our perspective, he gets the job done, relentless, tough. He caught Gill after all.

Thought you said he was former FBI. But he’s working with them?

Freelance. Someone higher up put him on the case.

Nodding, the man in the black windbreaker picked up the crime scene photos and stared at them one at a time. Finally, he dropped them back on the table. Now that they’ve been kind enough to capture Gill, I want you to get Gill from them.

How do we do that?

You’ll figure it out.

_______

The giant, Antoine Cariti, was in the kitchen, finishing his call with his contact, when he heard a car pull up in the gravel. Clicking off the call, he peeked into the front den, only to find it empty. His host, who had driven him here, was gone. No doubt replacing his host was the team in the car outside, the team sent to kill him.

Cariti quickly thought over his options. The wood-sided house was on a small lot surrounded by an old hurricane fence, and a gravel drive ran along the side to a dilapidated carport perched in a backyard overgrown with weeds. He did not dare look through the curtains for fear of taking a bullet through the window, but he knew it had to be a team of at least three, maybe four. One would take a place somewhere out back, waiting there in case Cariti fled that way. The rest would fan out from the front. He was trapped.

He stuffed his Glock back under the waistband of his pants. Moving fast for a man over three hundred pounds, he yanked the refrigerator away from the wall, kicking loose the power cord and water line from the wall. Water spurted from the now-open line. He slammed the front of the fridge down to the linoleum floor tiles. Then he jumped on the back of the fridge, punching it all the way through the floor.

Hunching down in front of the fridge top, which was embedded in the floor, he heaved at it until he was able to shift it out of the fresh hole in the floor and to the side. Leaping into the hole with both feet, he felt splintered wood shudder underneath him. He fell all the way through to the crawl space below.

He drew his gun again and crab-walked to the rear of the house and, hunkering down in the shadows, waited. He didn’t have to wait long. He could hear them come on from three sides—two storming the front door, one crashing through the window on the right side of the house, and a fourth rushing the back door. Bursting from below the house, Cariti caught the fourth assailant near the back door, tackling him before he could reach the back steps.

Making their way through the house and to the back, the other three assailants entered the kitchen and found the huge killer standing behind the fourth assailant. Cariti was a fearsome sight—one milky eye that rolled in its socket, pockmarked face, dark skin, and darker countenance. He was holding a knife to the fourth man’s throat.

The other three hesitated, which was their mistake. Their eyes were on the hand holding the knife. None of them wondered about Cariti’s other hand, which held the Glock, which he fired through the body of his captive. His captive shuddered, abdomen exploding as the bullets passed through and on to hit the three other men, cutting them down.

Cariti dropped his limp captive and put a bullet in the man’s head to make sure he was dead. He moved on to the other three, giving them a quick look-over. They were all Latinos, big louts, thugs who had not even fired their guns, which admittedly had been the purpose of their visit. One of them was writhing on the floor, smearing his blood across the linoleum. The other two were still.

Cariti put a bullet in the head of each of the two who were still. Then he stood before the one still writhing. The man looked up at him beseechingly, in agony. Cariti smiled. Four pros had come at him, and four had gone down. It was the same as always. He was the force of nature that couldn’t be stopped.

Crouching down by the one still alive, he gently, almost tenderly, ruffled the man’s hair. Still smiling, he slipped his gun back under the waistband of his pants, at the small of his back. He patted the man on the cheek, and the man moaned and tried to squirm away from his hand.

Don’t worry, said Cariti in a soothing tone. You will bleed out quick, but you will hurt. Okay? He pulled a Swiss Army knife, opening the main blade and holding it up. I am sorry. This is all I have. I left my big knife in someone else. Okay? The man groaned, and the giant clamped his left hand over the man’s mouth to muffle the screams.

_______

Through a window in the door, Ben Hawkins watched special agents run the prisoner’s leg chains through a hook in the floor of the interrogation room, then tighten the screws on the top of the hook to clamp the hook down into a notch in the floor.

A former FBI special agent now on consultative assignment, Hawkins was a little banged up right then. He was sore from his recent hand-to-hand with an attacker and bore a couple of fresh gashes on his face. Yet he was determined and relentless to get answers from this man he had hunted, and despite his weariness, he was not going to hold off the interrogation, which would likely be the first of a couple of sessions. Right now, he was studying the prisoner to form a picture of the man in his mind. He didn’t like what he saw.

Sammy Gill sat unmoving at the folding table, staring ahead at the wall. Tall and lithe and with the frame of an athlete, Gill had black hair and dark eyes that smoldered. The man was a killer. He had cut a bloody swath through the Morretti criminal empire like General Sherman through Georgia. Gill had obliterated Morretti crews, had destroyed Morretti operations on both coasts, and had earned the moniker Whack Job from FBI investigators. He had also unknowingly bumped off a couple of mob snitches lined up to testify for the feds. He was cold-blooded. He was trouble.

Hawkins had been after him for weeks, finally landing him here in an interrogation cell at 1 Justice Park Drive in Northwest Houston, site of the local FBI field office, or FO for short. Now despite having lost his whole family to another killer just the day before, Gill sat with an unnatural calm, which gave him the look and feel of a dangerous animal sitting deathly still before springing to attack its prey.

Hawkins was stumped, puzzled. He could not imagine how Gill could pull off this cool act after yesterday, how he could remain so detached. Hawkins himself had looked into that closet, had seen Gill’s slaughtered wife and children, and the sight had shaken him. He doubted he would ever forget it.

After a deep breath, Hawkins banged through the door as the agents left. Carrying folders under his arm, he strode to the other side of the table from Gill. Slowly, studying Gill’s face, he took a seat in a folding chair.

Been looking forward to the day you’d be sitting across from me in chains. Gill didn’t look at him, didn’t answer. First, Hawkins continued, just want to say I’m sorry about what happened to your family, your in-laws—the Carrs? No answer.

Now that he was sitting closer to him, Hawkins noticed that Gill’s skin was sallow, his eyes rimmed with red, and his stare vacant. It was a look of desolation. For the first time, Hawkins saw grief in the man’s eyes.

Hawkins opened a couple of folders and shuffled around documents. Pulling on a pair of reading glasses, he read one or two pages. A few answers for me and I’m out of here and out your hair. Leave your interrogation to others. For that, they’ll be moving you to Virginia tomorrow and give you the third degree out there. He was referring to the bureau, which was about to take Gill off his hands, transporting him to Quantico for another level of questioning. Gill shifted slightly, almost imperceptibly, in his chair.

At that point, lots of people will be joining in the discussion over in Virginia, continued Hawkins. Seems your profile’s of interest to a number of government agencies. ’Course, we get first dibs, being we caught your ass. Hawkins stared at Gill, taking the opportunity to study his face, looking for any expression, any hint, that a conversation might be brewing.

He took on a friendlier tone. Be honest. Wouldn’t hurt you to talk a little here and now. More you talk to me, less you might have to talk to them. See, I’m with you. I saw what happened yesterday. I want to cut you some slack. Some others might not be so sensitive. Hear what I’m saying? Gill just stared at the floor.

Standing before Gill, Hawkins leaned over, hands on the table. At six-foot-three and 220 pounds and with closely cropped hair and a lean, hard face that burned with intensity, he was a black man with the build and demeanor of a linebacker, which he once was. He intimidated most of those he interrogated, yet Gill didn’t flinch away from him, didn’t blink.

They’re giving me first crack at you, continued Hawkins. But when they get at you, you’ll feel it. See, you whacked a few government witnesses. They put a lot of blood and sweat into that damn investigation, only to see you screw it up. But you help me now, I can help you. Few details on how your system worked, how you contracted the jobs. We know you used a service—assassin’s bureau, some might call it. We’d like to know why they sent you after Morretti. Who was the client for that?

Gill shrugged. I’m not in the information business.

Oh, he talks! No, you’re in a whole different kind of business, ain’t you? Anger flared in Hawkins’s eyes.

Gill sighed wearily. I only dealt with those who had it coming.

You get to decide that? You a judge now? In two long strides, Hawkins was around the table. He sat on its edge by Gill. Maybe you guess wrong sometimes. See, you’re encroaching on my job now. I am the law. And let’s clarify here. Don’t make it out as if you’re some kind of angel of justice, okay? You’re somebody who killed people for money, pure and simple.

Hawkins stood and paced back around behind the table. You need to think about doing you some talking. It’ll be around-the-clock questioning before we hand you off, so you might as well get started. Comprende? But I’m gonna cut you a little slack and break for a few. I’ll be back in.

Barging out into the hallway, Hawkins strode toward the break room. I hope we got some fresh coffee around here! he declared to no one in particular.

Sarah Landis approached him. Tall and black-haired with the build of a runner, which she once was, Landis was the special agent who actually made the Gill arrest. Technically a contractor now, Hawkins had no arrest authority.

Ben, got a call for you, Sarah said. You can take it over here at this extension. She indicated a wall phone, one of its lines blinking.

Who is it?

Campbell.

Dan Campbell was the FBI special agent assigned as Hawkins’s supervisor on the new Organized Crime Task Force. He was also a stuffed shirt. Reluctantly, Hawkins grabbed the phone. He tried to force a little warmth into his voice.

Don.

Any news on Cariti?

Hawkins winced. Antoine Cariti, the killer of Gill’s family, had disappeared, and Hawkins had let it happen. He was irked about it. Leave it to Campbell to kick the sore spot.

I’ve got a BOLO out for him—state troopers, local PD, especially up the I-45 and I-10 corridors. We finally got a clear shot of the bastard on cameras at IAH. Had them enhanced by Achilles. Sent out as part of the BOLO. Hopefully, we’ll get movement on it.

Achilles was an experimental system at MIT that was supposed to enhance facial recognition to a degree unparalleled in any other existing program. So far, it seemed to work.

Hope you’re right, replied Campbell. But despite his words, there wasn’t much hope in his voice. How’d you lose him in the first place?

The accusatory tone didn’t help Hawkins’s mood. He sighed. He was gone when we arrived. Saw the handiwork he left behind, though—the corpses, the blood. Yeah, we captured Gill all right, because he was sitting in the room just staring at the corpses of his family—staring, lost, dead, like he was dead. Thought I’d nabbed Cariti too, but it was just one of the gunmen on his crew.

I hate that the creep got away again!

Well, I ain’t too happy about it either, Don! Hawkins forced optimism he didn’t feel. Look, if everyone keeps on top of it, we got another chance at him.

You’d better be right! Listen, something’s come up. I was planning on being there in a couple of hours, but it’s not happening. I can’t get away from here. You’ll have to push the interrogation along yourself. Can you handle that? Mr. Hendricks seems to think you can. So can you?

I’ll handle it. Gill doesn’t seem to think he’s taking any questions, though.

You need to change his mind, then, don’t you?

I’m at him again in a minute.

You don’t have long. Understand?

What do you mean? If I can’t get him to talk, they’ll just do it at Quantico. One way or another, we’ll get it out of him. Hawkins hoped he was right.

Just get him to talk now!

Puzzled, Hawkins clicked off the call and strode into the break room. Landis was popping the top on a Dr Pepper. Hawkins headed for the coffee maker.

Where’d you take Whitis?

Tim Whitis had been his partner for years till Hawkins learned that Whitis had been feeding information to Gill.

To a cell. Landis stared at him. You okay?

Hawkins was not okay. On top of fighting a feeling of despair, he was battling urges that ranged from simply quitting the job to guzzling a fifth of whiskey to putting a bullet in his head. You know, he muttered, I worked with Tim a long time. Considered him a friend—he paused—a real friend. Shows you what the hell I know.

I’m sorry, she replied. It’s hard to believe. What happens to him now?

He’s gonna go up for what he’s done.

She studied his face. And you don’t like that, do you? Not really.

He shook his head. He turned for a look through the door window into the interrogation room. Gill sat staring at the wall, just as Hawkins had left him. Hawkins felt like staring at a wall himself.

_______

Don Campbell was too nervous to sit and wait. He paced, drank too much coffee, which he usually avoided, and took glances out the window onto Pennsylvania Avenue, which was jammed with traffic as usual. A special agent out of the Hoover headquarters, he stood just under six feet but looked taller because of his straight-backed posture, which matched his short-cropped haircut, sense of decorum, and decided lack of humor.

But regardless of these qualities, he possessed the most experience of anyone in the bureau in tracking Islamist cell groups around the planet, and he had the files and head knowledge to prove it. Unfortunately, that knowledge was no longer needed. Counterterror was off his plate. It was off everyone’s plate. The country was supposedly moving on, the war on terror way behind everyone now. How nice.

That was why he had his office door closed. If Director Hendricks knew he was doing what he was doing, he would earn a reprimand, probably an official one. These days, he was supposed to be focusing on the Organized Crime Task Force. Instead, he was waiting for a video call from his counterpart in the German Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI), who was relaying a live feed of a GSG 9 raid about to go down in Hamburg.

His desk phone beeped. He picked it up. Click the link, directed the voice of his counterpart on the other end of the line. Campbell did and saw a startling image pop up on his laptop screen from the camera mounted on the helmet of one of the GSG 9 commandos. He sat and leaned forward to watch.

Chapter 2

It was a quick raid—door splintering in, flash-bangs following, and then the classic assault. The first GSG 9 team member to go in crossed to the far side of the room; the second man to the near side. A slug punched through the steel door next to the second commando’s head, and he whirled, firing his MP5 at a young man holding a pistol. Short, three-round bursts clipped into the young man’s chest and tore open his face. Another young man who jumped off the couch scrambled over for a gun in the corner. A second MP5 burst took him down.

Charging into the room, three more GSG 9 commandos threw down the room’s remaining occupant, who was disoriented by the flash-bangs. A sixth commando tossed a flash-bang into the adjoining back bedroom and rushed in, followed by team members one and two. They took down the two occupants of that room to the floor in four seconds flat, no shots fired.

Then the commandos looked around the room. Blood had soaked into the carpet, almost wall-to-wall. In the back closet, one of the commandos found a video camera on the shelf and a tripod in the corner. They checked the tiny bathroom and found the headless corpses of three men piled in the tub, each packed in a blood-filled plastic bag, their severed heads stacked on top of them. On the toilet sat a woman’s corpse, head almost severed. A few of the battle-hardened commandos turned from the sight in disgust, stepping to the outside hallway for a breath of air.

Campbell’s counterpart came back on the line.

Now we know what happened to our snitches.

Campbell understood that he meant the stack of corpses. He grimaced. How many of these people did you capture?

Three. Two dispatched.

Not one of them looked Arab to me.

That would be because they aren’t. They are university students who seem to love our country’s enemies more than our country. Typical attitude, I’m afraid, and it might as well be part of the curriculum these days. The German sighed.

I don’t think they are students first and foremost, Campbell mused. Being a student is just cover.

That is correct too. We have looked into their mosque affiliation. Recent converts.

And their training, consider that. Who of them went out of the country recently?

We will be looking into that. So in a moment, we will see what we have hauled in from them.

Besides capturing the three Germans—all white, all Muslim converts—the GSG 9 commandos snagged something just as potentially valuable: a laptop. The only problem with that was that one of the students, despite the shock of the assault, had triggered a poison dart to clear all the files in one electronic shot through a switch he had hit as soon as the first flash-bang had gone off, presenting the investigators with a challenge when trying to mine the laptop for information. Pulling data from fried files might take a while.

Besides the laptop, the GSG 9 team found one more item of interest buried under papers in a desk drawer: a Visa card. But it wasn’t a true Visa card. One of the commandos held it up to the helmet cam, turning it over in his hand so Campbell could get a good look at it from all sides. Campbell could tell it was thicker and heavier than a normal Visa. Strange. The commando bagged it with the peripherals and the laptop.

_______

Back at the lab in Bonn, taking the latest forensics software to the captured laptop and reinstalling its operating system, German technicians succeeded in recovering some of the files the poison dart had attacked. But after all that work, the only real gem they could find was a file detailing a purported shipment headed for the US a few weeks ago.

However, this gem had an odd color. The Muslims had enlisted the help of the Delacroces, an Italian mob family on the West Coast, to smooth the way on the docks with the workers and officials. Who knew? They could have also bribed some ICE men, agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It had been done before. Technicians also took apart the Visa card and found it loaded with circuitry, but they could not find a way to access whatever was stored on it.

Waiting halfway around the world, Campbell was impatient with the Germans. He needed to know what was on that card. He needed the rest of the material as well. Rather than wait to fill out the voluminous paperwork to take hold of the card, laptop, and peripherals, which would likely get him nothing but trouble with his superiors and no documents for his efforts, Campbell made a call to a contractor he knew, a former CIA man who now ran a security company.

Yeah, said Tony Lozica curtly over the phone, curtness being Tony’s way. He obviously recognized Campbell’s name on the caller ID.

Campbell had known Lozica for a few years, from back when Lozica worked CT at the agency and made enemies doing so, mostly of his agency colleagues. Lozica never spared feelings when plowing through them was so much faster. Hence, he was no longer with the agency—no surprise there—and had founded his own company, Tarawa Security, employing a small staff of ten and working in tandem with Ed Ralls from MIT.

Campbell hired Tarawa from time to time, most recently to take part in the Organized Crime Task Force and on a few CT cases. Now that CT work was officially off Campbell’s plate, he had to be more circumspect in how he approached it. He could land in big trouble, maybe even lose his career. He didn’t make this call to Lozica lightly, but he realized Lozica and Tarawa could fill a need.

I need a favor from you, muttered Campbell. He asked Lozica if he had any expert contacts in Europe who could take a look at the evidence from the Hamburg raid. Because officially, I can’t go a thousand miles near this. My hands are tied, also my feet, and I’ve got a hood over my damn head.

Using profanity now, are we? Lozica snickered. I think I can find someone who can help you. Just give me the details and your contacts.

At least see if you can get someone to make copies, digital and otherwise, of whatever GSG 9 recovered from that scene, everything they have—emails, file records, video recordings, voice mails—everything you can get your hands on.

I told you I’m on it!

Including this strange little Visa card that isn’t a Visa card.

_______

Ben Hawkins got a call from the FBI director.

Ben, this is Stan Hendricks, and I’m afraid I’ve got some news.

Doesn’t sound like good news.

Seems for some reason, your prisoner’s attracted the attention of our friends across the river. The CIA. And you know what happens when something attracts their interest.

Hawkins winced. Oh man, so they’re going to barge in here, try to take over?

Worse. They’re going to take him off our hands. Guy named McClellan got clearance through a 404.

Hendricks was referring to an executive order overriding normal protocols—executive order as in from the White House. How the hell did he get that? said Hawkins.

He’s a bad egg, McClellan, but well-connected. He’s a big fish over in that scum-ridden little pond.

No wonder Campbell wanted me to work fast on Gill. He know about this, didn’t he?

He suspected.

Sir, this is my collar. With all due respect, I brought the bastard in for the bureau, not for the agency.

We can’t do anything but comply. A 404 is in the interest of national security.

That old canard. Spooks toss that around like pancakes in my mama’s kitchen. We have to comply?

I’m afraid we do, so you don’t have a lot of time.

Crossing the hall back to the interrogation cell, Hawkins threw open the door. Gill didn’t even look up at him.

Well, declared Hawkins, looks like we’re gonna have us some visitors a little earlier than I planned. No answer. I think they may have a clue or two to your identity. They aren’t your friends like I am. They will cart you off, make your life a Gitmo paradise. Comprende?

Crossing his arms, he glowered at the chained killer, not knowing what else to do. Then he decided to lie. "I have the authority to hold them off your ass, but you gotta help me. You could start by telling