The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [7]
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.
Caruso's head turned to the house. His mind was moving quickly now. What did he really have? Not much. He'd looked into an ordinary light truck with no direct evidence at all in it, just an empty truck with a roll of duct tape and a small rug on the steel floor.
Even so
The young agent took the cell phone out of his pocket and speed dialed the office.
"FBI. Can I help you?" a female voice asked.
"Caruso for Ellis." That moved things quickly.
"What you got, Dom?"
"White Ford Econoline van, Alabama tag Echo Romeo Six Five Zero One, parked at my location. Sandy-"
"Yeah, Dominic?"
"I'm going to knock on this guy's door."
"You want backup?"
Caruso took a second to think. "Affirmative-roger that."
"There's a county mountie about ten minutes away. Stand by," Ellis advised.
"Roger, standing by."
But a little girl's life was on the line
He headed toward the house, careful to keep out of the sight lines from the nearest windows. That's when time stopped.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the scream. It was an awful, shrill sound, like someone looking at Death himself. His brain processed the information, and he suddenly found that his automatic pistol was in his hands, just in front of his sternum, pointed up into the sky, but in his hands even so. It had been a woman's scream, he realized, and something just went click inside his head.
As quickly as he could move without making much noise, he was on the porch, under the uneven, cheaply made roof. The front door was mostly wire screening to keep the bugs out. It needed painting, but so did the whole house. Probably a rental, and a cheap one at that. Looking through the screen he could see what seemed to be a corridor, leading left to the kitchen and right to a bathroom. He could see into it. A white porcelain toilet and a sink were all that was visible from this perspective. He wondered if he had probable cause to enter the house, and instantly decided that he had enough. He pulled the door open and slipped in as stealthily as