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“Executions, you mean? Yes, some Mob hits. But, Nicholas, this feels, well, cleaner. More precise. No one struggled. He shot them where they sat or stood or lay, and they didn’t even raise a hand to stop him. And the method, two fast shots? Yes, very clean.”
Nicholas said, “All Hodges did was speak to us, yet it was enough to send this killer over here to punish him, to erase him, and anyone with him.”
“To tie up loose ends.”
They left Mr. Hodges and walked back into the hallway to stand over the dead agent. Nicholas said, “What was his name?
She choked a little on the name. “Cedarson. Rex Cedarson.”
“He was in the bedroom watching over Mr. Hodges, heard the shots, or heard something that alarmed him, since the assassin may have used a suppressor, and was moving toward the kitchen when he was shot. At least he had time to get his gun out.”
Mike swallowed down grief and guilt. Rex was a good man, always up for a joke, had once even locked her in the men’s room. The other men were steady, professionals all the way, good family men.
“The other two agents were Bob Ventura and Kenneth Chantler. Though I knew Cedarson the best.” She didn’t add he had a two-year-old daughter and an eight-year-old son, a wife he loved and didn’t see enough of because he had a burning desire to move up the ladder and worked too much. The other two agents had similar lives. And they were gone, in the blink of an eye, simply gone. Their deaths were a punch to the gut. “I can’t stand this, Nicholas, I really can’t.”
He knew this was a huge blow, knew she was on the edge and might go over if he tried to comfort her, so he said matter-of-factly, “I want to show you something, but be careful. We don’t want to ruin any evidence CSI might pull from around the house.” Like Mike, though, he knew it was pointless. Whoever had done this hadn’t left a single trace of himself.
She followed Nicholas back into Mr. Hodges’s bedroom. He was staring at the dead man, then he raised his hand and mimicked shooting.
“I’d say Mr. Hodges was asleep when the shots were fired in the kitchen and Cedarson ran out of the room.”
“You think he could sleep through the shots, even suppressed?”
He didn’t, but he wanted to keep her focused. “Perhaps he took a sleeping pill. I don’t think he ever knew he was going to die. So look. The assassin stood right over him and took the two shots. I’d say he’s at least my height, maybe a bit taller. The ME won’t find gunpowder residue on Mr. Hodges, or on the others; the wounds are all clean. The killer came in hard and fast—four shots in the kitchen, two in the hallway, two in here. Mr. Hodges was the target, of course.”
“All of these men dead simply because one honest, lonely man was a good citizen and told us what he’d heard at the bar. I can’t believe that level of—what would you even call this?”
Nicholas said, “Insurance. Our assassin is really careful, believes in overkill. Is he someone from COE? Until now, COE hasn’t gone around killing people. And this was professional all the way. What would a professional assassin be doing hooked up to a small-beans anti-oil terrorist group? Why this elaborate killing? It wouldn’t have mattered. There was nothing more Mr. Hodges could have told us.”
“Remember Mr. Zachery believes someone new has been added to COE? Someone more violent? Maybe whoever this is now runs things.”
“Seems to me this level of escalation pretty well nails it. A new violent addition.”
They heard a siren. “Backup’s nearly here. Nicholas, how did the assassin find Mr. Hodges? How did COE even know he’d spoken to us?”
Nicholas said, “I think we probably led the killer right here to Mr. Hodges’s house.”
“Someone followed us? From Federal Plaza?”
His mobile rang. He glanced down—one o’clock in the morning, and the number on the screen was the main number at 26 Federal Plaza.
“Drummond here.”
“Nicholas,” Agent Gray Wharton said, “we have a huge problem.”
“Yes, Mike and I are standing in the middle of it. I’m in Bayonne, and we have four bodies, including Mr. Richard Hodges, our tipster.”
Wharton swore. “He’s dead? Our guys are down, too? Yes, of course they are. Give me a second here, Nicholas.”
Nicholas heard him draw a deep breath, could practically see him trying to get hold of himself. “Okay, listen, on top of all that, there’s more. I’m sending a file to your phone right now.”
Nicholas felt the phone vibrate slightly in his hand. “It’s here. Gray, what am I looking at?”
“Someone launched a major cyber-attack on all of the major oil companies. Everyone’s been hit—Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Occidental, all of them. Their systems are down, and so far we haven’t been able to break the encryptions. Nicholas, it’s bad. It’s very bad. Worse than the Shamoon virus attack on the Saudis in 2012, and with all the same hallmarks.”
“Who’s behind it? Russia? The Chinese?”
“I’ve been tracking it as best I can, but it’s coming from multiple international sites. I need you. You’ve got to get here as soon as you can.”
