Tick Tock - James Patterson [80]
“Mike, Karen. Karen, Mike,” Emily said as we climbed in.
Emily grabbed shotgun while I was relegated to the backseat next to the baby on board. I flicked some cheerios off the leather before I sat.
“Please tell Mike what you were telling me, Karen. You worked with Carl Apt in Intelligence, right?”
“I did,” the thin woman said, checking her mirror.
“How about the baby?” I said, smiling at the cute little girl.
“She’s a civilian,” Karen assured me with a smile. “I worked for the Company until a year ago. Now I’m a Larchmont soccer-mom-in-training. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Love makes you do some damn strange things.”
“I know what that’s like,” I said.
Emily shot me a look from the front seat.
“I thought it was Carl when I saw the security shot in the Post,” Karen began, “but I didn’t come forward because of national secrecy, yada, yada, yada. But after the recent death of that woman, I couldn’t stay silent anymore. What I’m about to tell you is classified information. You didn’t hear this from me. Agreed? In 2002 I worked in Yemen with the CIA SAD.”
“Is that the stay-at-home-dad department?” I said.
“Special Activities Division,” she said as we hooked a quick left down an alley-wide Chinatown street. “We were responsible for covert military raids on Al Qaeda targets. Carl was on one of our strike teams. He was the bomb tech. All the other Delta guys deferred to him for all things explosive. He actually won the Intelligence Star commendation in our operation when he used a predator drone to knock out a pickup truck loaded with bad guys who were coming in on our position.”
“You’re kidding me,” I said.
“I made some phone calls,” Karen said. “Carl, while great at war, wasn’t too hot on the domestic front. He was working at Fort Bragg as a Delta Force trainer up until 2003, when he got into a beef with his new supervisor. He was about to be transferred out of the group, when the CO found some C-four wired to his car battery. When they came to ask Apt about it, he was gone. He’d bugged out.”
“He went AWOL,” Emily said.
“Not just that,” Karen said. “A month to the day after he left, the supervisor didn’t show up for work. They found him sitting at his kitchen table in his bathrobe with the top of his head blown into his bowl of Blueberry Morning. Coroner retrieved two .forty-five ACPs from his brain pan. He’d been double tapped, execution-style. No forced entry. Apt must have picked the lock. Delta Force SOP. Apt came back and finished the job.”
That explained a lot, I thought. Apt’s dedication, his bomb-making flair. It also explained the connection he had with Berger. Both warped bastards had been “wronged by the world.”
“That’s what I call Army strong,” I said as the baby grabbed my thumb. “Do you know anything about Berger?”
“The rich fat guy?” Karen said. “Not a thing. I just thought I’d let you know who you’re up against. Apt knows tactics, counterinsurgency. He’s one dangerous son of a bitch. I said more than once that I was glad he was on our side. Only now he’s not.”
“Any family?” Emily said.
“Only family on his army record is a mother. Deceased.”
I looked out at the street then turned and looked at the baby.
“You wouldn’t know where Carl is right now, would you?” I asked the little girl.
Chapter 88
AS SPY MOM DROPPED ME and Emily off in front of One Police Plaza, I felt a tingle run up my side. Instead of my Spidey sense cluing me in to Apt’s current location like I was hoping, it was just my cell phone that I’d left on vibrate.
“The good news is that you don’t have to attend this morning’s piss-and-moan session,” my boss said. “One guess what’s behind door number two.”
I took the phone off my ear and just stared at it as I leaned back on one of the massive concrete bomb-blast planters out in front of the building.
“Another one?” Emily groaned.
“How? Where?” I finally said into the phone.
“The Carlyle Hotel,” Mirlam said. “Madison and Seventy-something. Looks like a hooker, Mike.