Page 60 of Flash and Bang

“I heard you and your partner had an accident—that someone ran you off the road. There was no mention of government plates in my briefing which is a pretty stupid move when you think of it. There’s no official order of surveillance on you, so whoever is watching you has to be operating outside my purview and that’s hard to believe. If it’s true, then whoever ordered it must be very highly placed.”

“My partner didn’t remember the fact that they were government plates until afterward. We both ended up getting knocked around pretty good.”

His father let out an audible sigh. “I swear on your brothers’ lives, I knew nothing of it, Jarrett. I swear it wasn’t sanctioned by the Company. Someone’s gone rogue here and I intend on getting to the bottom of it.”

Jarrett’s stomach did a flip-flop. If his father hadn’t ordered the hit on Thayne and him yesterday, whoever it was had certainly known Jarrett would be involved in the raid down at the border. He’d recognized the man who tried to shoot him in the head inside the Fernandez barn as involved in a past CIA-run operation. He’d thought he was an operative he’d known from running the missions in Afghanistan, though he didn’t know his name. That’swhy he’d followed him into the barn to begin with. Unfortunately, the guy had turned and fired at him as soon as he ran into the barn, and if the asshole’s aim had been any better, Jarrett would have been dead.

Now he was even more confused. Who the hell was trying to kill him and why? Whoever it was must have a hell of a lot of power to have the kind of reach they needed to find out that Jarrett and Thayne were going to be involved in the raid. It was highly unlikely a rogue operative had randomly spotted him that night and decided to take a shot when he did. Who would want to kill a lowly ATF rookie? What purpose could it serve?

“Someone gave a kill order on me. Why?” he asked, hating how his voice trembled when he asked.

“Like I said, Jarrett, that’s what I’ve been trying to figure out ever since you were shot in Turlock, months ago. The first I learned of someone coming after you was when Roberto Virgil Romero decided to take you out along with Wolfe who he’d been paid to kill. Before that, I had no idea. I’ve been working leads on that end too,” his father said. “The only connection I can find between you and Virgil are the missions you did while you served together. He went dark after the Marine Corps the same way youdid. Did you work with him after the Corps?”

A shiver went through Jarrett. Of course his father would know about Turlock and his past missions with Virgil too. “I worked with Virgil a couple of times in the Corps but those were two-man jobs. You know about those.”

“So nothing after you left the Corps?”

“Nothing after.”

“Okay. I’ll keep looking into it.”

“Thanks,” Jarrett said. He had to admit, he was glad he’d made the call. He was actually beginning to believe that maybe he’d misjudged his father after all.

“Son?”

It felt weird to be called that by a man he’d thought hated him. “Yeah?”

“Your partner? Is he a good man?”

Jarrett swallowed against the lump that formed in his throat. “Yeah. Thayne’s brave and honorable. He’s a better man than me.”

“I doubt that, Jarrett. You may be a lot of things, boy, but I never doubted your bravery or your love for this country, though I questioned your sense when I heard you were taking mercenary jobs. Ithink I’d like to meet Wolfe someday,” he said quietly.

Jarrett felt a tinge of relief, something he hadn’t felt when speaking to his father for a very long time. “I’d like that,” he choked out.

“Jarrett—you take good care, boy—and call your brothers. They miss you like hell. Jarrett…”

“Yeah?”

“Keep your head down, son.”

“Will do, sir.” Jarrett heard the line disconnect and he pulled the phone away from his ear. He stared at the blank screen as it suddenly turned blurry. He closed his eyes against the sharp sting of tears, feeling as though a massive weight had just been lifted from his shoulders.

****

Jarrett and Thayne were both going stir-crazy after a few days’ rest. Even though Thayne had bitched at him to stay in bed the full week, Jarrett had stubbornly refused him and they went back to the office right before the Fourth of July holiday. Stanger hadn’t let them come back until they both got cleared by their doctors—again. Having to get a note just so they could go back to work was getting alittle old actually. As it turned out, Connor and Darcy had made some progress in the investigation while they’d been absent, so the case was moving forward and the forced time off for recuperation hadn’t been a complete and total waste. They greeted Sarah and Tim and immediately sat down with them to talk about what they’d been able to find out.

Tim had spoken to the Mexican satellite office of the ATF and the agent down there reported that they’d been able to find evidence of a much smaller shipment of illegal fireworks that had come up through the country from Chile prior to the one Thayne and Jarrett had been able to help the FBI stop. As far as they were able to tell, the fireworks had been off-loaded over the border at the Fernandez farm almost six months before, and though they weren’t certain who the recipients had been, they could only assume they’d gone to the Freedom Brigade as well.

“That means there’s a possibility that they were used in the Chinatown explosion,” Sarah said, looking hopeful.

“Yeah, the problem is, we can’t possibly test them since none of the debris from the scene was collected as evidence,” Thayne said. “I’m almost sure those were Revilla’s field strips in Chinatown. Headmitted to us that he strips his cigs that way and his girlfriend’s knowledge of the militia is just too coincidental for them not to be the ones who sent up the lantern. They have experience handling fireworks. The question remains as to why both scenes had notes with scripture verses about fire and brimstone. This is some kind of religious nut and neither Revilla nor Quinn struck me as being particularly religious.”

Jarrett leaned forward in his chair, speaking low. “I can’t shake the notion that Suki Chang is somehow involved in that incident right along with them. Revilla and Quinn aren’t exactly members of Mensa but Chang does have the intelligence to pull something like this off. She has a background in chemistry and with her ATF training, and the smarts she obviously displays from her grades in school, she might also have the knowhow to do something like that.”

“You think the Chinatown explosion was a test of some sort,” Darcy stated. “To what end? I mean, no one was seriously injured in the incident and if they wanted to hurt a lot of people the way they did down in Miramar, wouldn’t they have packed a lot more punch in the basket of that lantern?”

Jarrett nodded. “I don’t think they wanted tohurt anyone seriously. They may have just been testing the explosive impact of the fireworks they bought to see if the black powder in them worked the way they needed it to. This may be a total stretch of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she planned and carried out the entire event with Revilla and Quinn. Then she made sure she was the one to investigate the incident so she could manage the ATF’s involvement by declaring it an accident, then convincing the LAPD officer, Deukmejian, of the same. She didn’t want us to take the investigation any further than she did. Another thing… she said she conversed with the maker of the lantern yet she didn’t keep any of the woman’s contact information or put it in the report for follow-up? Right. There’s something inherently wrong with that whole story.”