Patriot games - Tom Clancy [170]
"You heard anything on the ballistics yet?" the Major asked, turning the car onto Rowe Boulevard.
"Oughta be waiting for us." They'd found almost twenty nine-millimeter cartridge cases to go along with the two usable bullets recovered from the Porsche, and the one that had gone through Trooper Fontana's chest and lodged in the back seat of his wrecked car. These had gone directly to the FBI laboratory in Washington for analysis. The evidence would tell them that the weapon was a submachine gun, which they already knew, but might give them a type, which they didn't yet know. The cartridge cases were Belgian-made, from the Fabrique Nationale at Liege. They might be able to identify the lot number, but FN made so many millions of such rounds per year, which were shipped and reshipped all over the world, that the lead was a slim one. Very often such shipments simply disappeared, mainly from sloppy-or creative-bookkeeping.
"How many black groups are known to have contact with these ULA characters?"
"None," Capitano replied. "That's something we are going to have to establish."
"Great."
Ryan arrived home to find an unmarked car and a liveried State Police cruiser in his driveway. Jack's own FBI interview wasn't a long one. It hadn't taken long to confirm the fact that he quite simply knew nothing about the attempt on his family or himself.
"Any idea where they are?" he asked finally.
"We're checking airports," the agent answered. "If these guys are as smart as they look, they're long gone."
"They're smart, all right," Ryan noted sourly. "What about the one you caught?"
"He's doing one hell of a good imitation of a clam. He has a lawyer now, of course, and the lawyer is telling him to keep his mouth shut. You can depend on lawyers for that."
"Where'd the lawyer come from?"
"Public defender's office. It's a rule, remember. You hold a suspect for any length of time, he has to have a lawyer. I don't think it matters. He probably isn't talking to the lawyer either. We have him on a state weapons violation and federal immigration laws. He goes back to the U.K. as soon as the paperwork gets done. Maybe two weeks or so, depending on if the attorney contests things." The agent closed his notebook. "You never know, maybe he'll start talking, but don't count on it. The word we get from the Brits is that he's not real bright anyway. He's the Irish version of a street hood, very good with weapons but a little slow upstairs."
"So if he's dumb, how come-"
"How come he's good at what he does? How smart do you have to be to kill somebody? Clark 's a sociopathic personality. He has very little in the way of feelings. Some people are like that. They don't relate to the people around them as being real people. They see them as objects, and since they're only objects, whatever happens to them is not important. Once I met a hit man who killed four people-just the ones we know about-and didn't bat an eye, far as I could tell; but he cried like a baby when we told him his cat died. People like that don't even understand why they get sent to prison; they really don't understand," he concluded. "Those are the scary ones."
"No," Ryan said. "The scary ones are the ones with brains, the ones who believe in it."
"I haven't met one of those yet," he admitted.
"I have." Jack walked him to the door and watched him pull away. The house was an empty, quiet place without Sally running around, without the