Without remorse - Tom Clancy [180]
'You still haven't told me -'
'He's a combat veteran. He's very, very fit. That means he's younger than we are and highly trained. Ranger, Green Beret, somebody like that'
'Why is he out there?'
'I don't know. You're going to have to ask him. But what you have is somebody who takes his time. He's watching his victims. He's picking the same time of day - when they're tired, when street traffic is low, to reduce the chance of being spotted. He's not robbing them. He may take the money, but that's not the same thing. Now tell me about this morning's kill,' Farber commanded in a gentle but explicit way.
'You have the photo. There was a whole lot of cash in a bag upstairs. We haven't counted it yet, but at least fifty thousand dollars.'
'Drug money?'
'We think so.'
'There were other people there? He kidnapped them?'
'Two, we think. A man definitely, and probably a woman, too.'
Farber nodded and puffed away for a few seconds. 'One of two things. Either that's the person he was after all along, or he's just one more step towards something else.'
'So all the pushers he killed were just camouflage.'
'The first two, the ones he wired up -'
'Interrogated them.' Ryan grimaced. 'We should have figured this out. They were the only ones who weren't killed in the open. He did it that way to have more time.'
'Hindsight is always easy,' Farber pointed out. 'Don't feel too bad. That one really did look like a robbery, and you had nothing else to go on. By the time you came here, there was a lot more information to look at.' The psychiatrist leaned back and smiled at the ceiling. He loved playing detective. 'Until this one' - he tapped the photos from the newest scene with his pipe - 'you didn't really have much. This is the one that makes everything else clear. Your suspect knows weapons. He knows tactics. He's very patient. He stalks his victims like a hunter after a deer. He's changing his methodology to throw you off, but today he made a mistake. He showed a little rage this time, too, because he used a knife deliberately, and he showed the kind of training he had by cleaning the weapon right away.'
'But he's not crazy, you say.'
'No, I doubt he's disturbed in a clinical sense at all, but sure as hell he's motivated by something. People like this are highly disciplined, just like you and I were. Discipline shows in how he operates - but his anger also shows in why he operates. Something made this man start to do this.'
' "Ma'am." '
That one caught Farber short. 'Exactly! Very good. Why didn't he eliminate her? That's the only witness we know about. He was polite to her. He let her go ... interesting ... but not enough to go on, really.'
'Except to say that he's not killing for fun.'
'Correct.' Farber nodded. 'Everything he does will have a purpose, and he has a lot of specialized training that he can apply to this mission. It is a mission. You have one really dangerous cat prowling the street.'
'He's after drug people. That's pretty clear,' Ryan said. 'The one - maybe two - he kidnapped...'
'If one is a woman, she'll survive. The man will not. From the condition of his body we'll be able to tell if he was the target.'
'Rage?'
'That will be obvious. One other thing - if you have police looking for this guy, remember that he's better with weapons than almost anybody. He'll look harmless. He'll avoid a confrontation. He doesn't want to kill the wrong people, or he would have killed this Mrs Charles.'
'But if we corner him -'
'You don't want to do that.'
'All comfy?' Kelly asked.
The recompression chamber was one of several hundred produced for a Navy contract requirement by the Dykstra Foundry and Tool Company, Inc., of Houston, Texas, or so the name plate said. Made of high-quality steel, it was designed to reproduce the pressure that came along with scuba diving. At one end was a triple-paned four-inch-square Plexiglas window. There was even a small air lock so that items could be passed in, like food or drink, and inside the chamber was a twenty-watt reading light in a protected fixture. Under