Once Quiet (Jack Widow Book 5) Page 5

  The man in California said, “Like who?”

  Qatal said, “I’m sure I can dig up somebody.”

  And he knew that he was going with Option B.

  CHAPTER 7

  QATAL HAD A PATSY in mind the same day. He had gotten in a morning surf after talking to the man in California. And he hadn’t sweated the short timetable of the pressure because pressure was his home.

  Liam Sossaman was a loose end that he felt they should’ve tied off ten years ago, but the man in California didn’t want him dead, just out of the picture. And he had had good reasons. A dead Liam Sossaman meant that the wife would get controlling interest of the company and they would have the same problems all over again. But an incapacitated Liam Sossaman, now that would solve their problem.

  Qatal remembered the mission well. It had been easy.

  Snatch and grab. No one was supposed to get hurt, according to the man in California, but sometimes things happen. Plans don’t go according to plan. In this case, the competition had been an attractive woman. Which changed things.

  They had successful grabbed the target.

  It was easy because his team was made up of former special forces operators from all over the world and the FBI had only sent two agents.

  The two agents had given them minimal resistance. Of course, the only reason that they didn’t provide much of a challenge was because Qatal’s guys had blown up their transport van with a roadside bomb. Both agents were pretty much out cold when they attacked them.

  The man in California hadn’t wanted them to kill anyone, but seriously, was he going to leave witnesses alive? Of course not. His alias had been Qatal, the killer, after all.

  When he found out that one of the FBI agents was an attractive woman that fact led to the next thing. And the next thing was implemented at the last minute because she was an attractive woman. The thing after that was that she had to die. But he could give her over to his boys first. They had earned a little fun. And was it fun. He remembered it more than most missions.

  After his boys had some fun, then he had a little fun. And then he had killed her.

  That was ten years ago. Now he had to take care of the problem of Liam Sossaman and his family.

  Qatal couldn’t just run onto the farm or ranch or whatever it was and kill everyone. That’s what he wanted to do. He couldn’t do that. Not right off the bat.

  Sure the local cops would be pushovers. They’d never figure out what happened. But Sossaman had once been an FBI informant, a witness to the murder of one of their agents and her team. Therefore, the FBI would certainly investigate.

  The FBI was a different sort of animal over local cops. Not to mention the supposed NCIS unit that had an open investigation into Sossaman and the man in California, which would in turn lead them to him.

  He had to kill everyone and pin it on someone else. Someone who might do something like this. Someone who might be misguided. Someone who wanted answers and was desperate to get them.

  That’s when he came up with the perfect patsy.

  Qatal had thought about it while he was out surfing the waves of the Caribbean Sea.

  He finished his last set and toweled off and walked back up the wooden steps to his villa. He slid open the slider and stepped in and walked to a bar in the kitchen. He had left his PC on the countertop. He opened it and booted it up.

  He started to research the patsy. He had heard of her before. He had heard of her right after they found the dead FBI agent.

  The patsy was a woman who had been affected by the coma of Liam Sossaman, by the woman that they had killed.

  Her name was Escobar. She was perfect.

  Qatal learned all he could about her. He learned about her obsession with the case. He learned that she had pursued it relentlessly. But she had met with roadblocks at every turn. The FBI and the Navy wanted to cover it up. The whole thing was too messy for them to admit. They were never going to find him.

  Eventually, they found Liam Sossaman, but he was in a coma. That part had been the idea of the man in California. Qatal admitted to himself that he liked that part.

  After they ambushed and killed the FBI team that was transporting Sossaman from overseas.

  The FBI was trying to transport Sossaman from Bahrain back to DC. He had started as a Naval prisoner because he had turned himself in to the commanders at Naval Support Activities Bahrain.

  They provided him with a FBI transport which they were to meet at a Naval base in Naples, Italy.

  The transfer location was off base. It was a simple handoff.

  Qatal and his guys had staked out the drop point. Waited for the NCIS guy to leave. The FBI agents had rented a panel van. They were driving Sossaman to the airport and then they would board a plane.

  Qatal and his guys took them down on an abandoned industrial road. Simple as that.

  Qatal had employed a former Rangers guy who was also a medic. They used a drug called propofol to induce a coma for Sossaman. That drug was then mixed with some other cocktails that Sossaman Medical Technology had introduced to the market and they were able to make the coma more permanent.

  With Sossaman out of the way, the man in California was able to continue to run the company and make it more profitable the way he saw fit. And the FBI had no case without their star witness.

  Qatal wrote an email to Escobar. He relished in the thought that she was being led to her death by the same man who had killed her sister.

  He wrote an email claiming that he was a concerned agent. He was a former friend of Escobar’s sister. Which made them friends. And that he wanted to see justice done. He told her that Sossaman was one of the guilty parties who had killed her sister. He told her there was a government cover-up because the whole thing was embarrassing to the Bureau and to the Navy.

  He even asked her if she ever saw the photos of the crime scene in Naples.

  Then he waited.

  Qatal was prepared to wait twenty-four hours before he had to come up with another plan and a different patsy. But he didn’t have to wait that long.

  Agent Escobar, sister to the dead Agent Escobar, emailed him right back.

  She asked who he was and she answered “No” that she hadn’t seen the photos.

  Qatal sneered a malevolent grin because he had her. He had his patsy.

  He sent her a photo of the remains of her sister.

  After that, he didn’t have to do much. He suggested that she hire some local guys to recon for her. He told her that he would pick them out. Then he would give her their contact information.

  After which, he spent all of about two hours looking for the perfect candidates. He found a few brothers. The oldest had been in prison. They seemed like lowlifes and by his estimation they weren’t too smart. They would do.

  Then he suggested that she go to Eureka and have an in-person meeting with the wife. He suggested to her that even if Sossaman died without waking up, the wife knew more than she was letting on.

  After that, all he did was point her in the right direction. His plan was to lead Escobar to the family at the center of her sister’s murder and then kill them all.

  Option B.

  Ten years of a gaping hole inside Escobar had done most of the work for him.

  Now he had his patsy and soon he’d kill the Sossamans and tie up that loose end.

  Two birds. One stone.

  CHAPTER 8

  QATAL HAD A GUY who lived in Seattle, which was a stroke of luck because that’s where Escobar lived.

  About forty-eight hours after he had her on the hook, he woke up early in the morning. Qatal didn’t drink coffee, but he liked Earl Grey. He knew that it was a little unusual for an American Navy man to drink tea instead of coffee. In fact, back in his service days, he had taken a lot of flak about it. That was back before he had earned the name of Qatal.

  He remembered being picked on by an officer who outranked him, once. The guy saw him drinking Earl Grey and then he started a rumor that Qatal w
as a secret redcoat.

  The next day when they were at sea, one of the other enlisted sailors started calling him Redcoat. Qatal hadn’t said a word about it. He didn’t deny it. He didn’t ask the sailor not to call him that. He simply took it.

  A week had gone by and one day that sailor went missing. No one knew where he had gone. They had been in the Sea of Japan, which wasn’t necessarily a hostile sea, but it wasn’t paradise either.

  The crew grew concerned about the whereabouts of the missing sailor. Fingers started to point in Qatal’s direction, naturally. Foul play was suspected. And search parties were sent out. They spent twenty-four hours searching the open waters of the Sea of Japan. The rest of the crewmembers were certain that Qatal had thrown the man overboard.

  The Special Agent Afloat, a NCIS agent assigned to ride onboard a battleship with the sailors, was called to arrest Qatal under suspicion of murder.

  Before he could put the handcuffs on Qatal, the missing sailor was found.

  He had been hiding in a broom closet, below deck.

  When asked why he had been hiding, why he had let the crew think that he was dead or thrown overboard, the sailor said nothing about it. He just said he was sorry. He claimed that he was scared about being at sea. And this was a guy who had been deployed at sea for over a year.

  The Special Agent Afloat had to release Qatal.

  Two things happened after that. The missing sailor had been demoted back to Seaman Recruit, the Navy’s lowest rank, a real embarrassment for him. And no one ever called Qatal a redcoat again. Not did anyone mention his love for tea.

  After Qatal drank a couple sips of his tea, he picked up his satellite phone and dialed the number for his man in Seattle.

  The phone rang and the guy picked up on the second ring. Probably because he recognized the number.

  The man in Seattle said, “Hey, boss. What’s up?”

  “Judd, I need you for something.”

  Judd was also a former SEAL, like Qatal, only he had left the Navy with a messier record. He had been discharged, honorably, but that was only a stroke of luck. He had been involved in a robbery charge that had nothing to do with the Navy. It was an armed robbery job that involved him and his younger brother. They were charged with the crime and then later acquitted due to lack of evidence. But the trial had taken six months and the charges alone were enough reason for the Navy to decide to cut ties with Judd.

  Qatal said, “Remember the Sossaman thing?”

  “From Naples?”

  “Yeah. I remember.”

  “There’s been a development.”

  Qatal went on to explain that they needed the family dead to get their shares for their friend in California. He explained about his plan to manipulate a patsy. He explained his plan to pin it all on her. He explained that they would just kill everyone and make it look like it all went horribly wrong.

  Most of this didn’t matter to Judd. He only wanted the money and the work. But he was excited about the body count.

  Qatal asked, “Can you help me out?”

  “You know it, boss. What you need me to do?”

  “I want you to follow the patsy. Make sure she stays out of trouble. Make sure she makes her way to Eureka and doesn’t chicken out.”

  “I got it. Need me to push her?”

  “No. Stay invisible. She’s not gonna chicken out. Probably.”

  “What if she does?”

  Qatal said, “Kill her.”

  Judd smiled and asked, “What’s her name?”

  “She’s an FBI agent. I already made contact and gave her incentive to follow through,” Qatal said, then he paused a brief moment. He said, “Her name’s Escobar.”

  Judd didn’t respond to the name. Which didn’t surprise Qatal. Why would he remember some woman’s name that they murdered ten years ago?

  Qatal said, “The FBI agent from Naples.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s her sister.”

  “Nice one. Did you have to push hard?”

  “No, but listen Judd. Stay professional. Know what I’m saying?”

  Judd looked over at his half-drunk bottle of whiskey. He said, “I’m sober. Don’t worry.”

  “All right. I’ll need you to follow her. I’ll be in touch in a week or so.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  Both men hung up the phones.

  Qatal went back to drinking his tea and smiled. He loved this stuff.

  CHAPTER 9

  ON ANOTHER MORNING, an early one, two weeks later, the first watcher, the one in charge, stared through the scope of the M40 sniper rifle. He wasn’t going to use the internet-bought field glasses. No way. That was beneath him. He used to be in the service, once. Only one deployment, but still he was above using some cheap field glasses.

  The first watcher wasn’t the oldest of the four, but the second oldest. His older brother was the oldest of the group, but the first watcher was the only one who had military experience and training. It was, after all, his M40 sniper rifle, not the one he carried in combat, way back in his service days, but a near replica that he had purchased seven years earlier at a gun show down in Great Falls. It’d cost him only four hundred bucks, which was a steal, he thought. And it was. He had test fired it out in the country and then he had taken it deer hunting. That wasn’t quite legal, but he didn’t pay four hundred dollars to not use it to kill things.

  Since the first watcher had the military experience, he felt that he should be the one in charge. None of the other three disputed this claim to power. They never had, not in their whole lives. Not even before he went off to the Marine Corps. They never would dispute it anyway because there was a natural pecking order in place, established and respected.

  It reminded him of the military. There was a chain of command and he was at the tip-top, like a general or an admiral or, hell, like the president.

  The youngest watcher was his nephew, and the son of his oldest brother. He was also the only one who had any college experience. Even though he had flunked out after his first semester, he was a prodigy genius compared to the other three. As his father always put it, he could read good.

  Therefore, it seemed only natural that he would be the one to record the notes, which was fine by him because it gave him a sense of importance and purpose, like a role in their family group.

  He liked this responsibility because he had only just turned twenty-one. He had never held a job before and he had never been given a real assignment like this one.

  The current shift had belonged to him and his youngest uncle, who hadn’t been very significant at all, but was closer to his age. Which meant that they were almost always paired together.

  The two of them watched the family-owned cattle ranch closely, making sure to document the movements of the people who lived there. There were five occupants in the main house and three in bunk beds in the workers’ quarters, which was near the barn. Two of them cowhands, who hadn’t been let go, not yet. Then there was the wrangler in charge.

  A housekeeper drove in every day like clockwork from the town at about oh seven-thirty military time, or seven-thirty a.m. the way that the nephew looked at it. But his uncle had wanted everything in military time; that was the way he liked it.

  The housekeeper was a fat South American woman, fatter than the nephew had ever had, but the others kept saying that she was for him. He didn’t like that. He thought he was too scrawny to handle a woman like that. He wasn’t into the extra love handles, as his pa put it.

  Like all four of them, he wanted the wife, but he knew that the odds of them letting him pop his rape-cherry on her were slim to none, more in the none category than the slim.

  The cattle ranch had only three types of animals: the cattle, about a half dozen horses, and a dog that the watchers guessed was a Labrador or German Shepard mix. So far, they had been unable to document the dog’s name or any of the names of the workers. How were they supposed to do that? They didn’t have state-of-the-ar
t surveillance equipment or wiretaps or any funding from the client. But none of that mattered because they were doing fine so far. They had remained hidden and on task.

  Originally, they were documenting the activities of the workers as much as they could, but the workers weren’t the primary focus. The primary focus was the man of the house.

  The man of the house was the husband of the family, a guy called Liam Sossaman. Other than the fact that their client was interested in the first place, he was also the most interesting one to them. Yet, he was also the most boring at the same time.

  Sossaman was the only connection between their client and the rest of the family. The connection wasn’t something that any of the watchers knew of, not specifically. They had all known not to ask too many questions. Their client wasn’t the type of person to be questioned or second-guessed.

  They were on a need-to-know basis and they didn’t need to know.

  The reason why the husband had been so boring to watch was because he didn’t do anything. He didn’t go outside or come to the windows or walk the house. He couldn’t do any of these things.

  He didn’t do any of these things because he was in a coma.

  As far as they could tell, Sossaman was completely bedridden and probably brain dead, hooked up to hospital machines that reminded them of their departed grandfather, and great grandfather to one of them. None of them could wait for the old guy to kick the bucket. The old crank had finally died last winter.

  They had been living on his property, which they assumed they were going to inherit when he croaked because their father was dead already and they were next in line. But when the old man eventually bit it, things didn’t stack up the way that they had expected. They were correct that he had willed the estate to them. It included their modest property that was dozens of miles away on the other end of the Kootenai River and a nice size house that they were already living in.

  The problem was when the old coot died, the government, or more accurately, the Internal Revenue Service took their house, their property, and kicked them out—death and taxes.