Lee Child - MatchUp

“I’ll take a look,” she said. Then added, “Maybe.”

“If you want to get in touch with me, it’ll have to be in the next half hour,” Burch said. “After that, I’ll be up in the air and the connections to this phone won’t be good. I’ll have other com equipment, though, and I’ll call you if anything changes.”

Regan didn’t really want to look at the films, but thought she had to. She sat staring at the iPad for a minute, then finally opened the mail from Burch, found the code number, copied it, went to the other e-mail from him, and pasted the number in the small square of the encrypted link.

Six links.

Six minutes.

Children.

She didn’t even want to speculate on their ages.

Mostly little girls, with an occasional weeping little boy.

“Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” she whispered, tears in her eyes.

She didn’t know if she was praying or cursing. Her stomach turned over and something ugly took hold of her heart and twisted.

“You sick, sick bastard,” she whispered thinking of the man she’d never met, the man who went by Michael Drake. When she was done, she clicked away and received a warning that said, When you leave this link, you will not be able to reenter without obtaining a new authorization and a new password.

Thank God.

She closed the link.

That was something no one should ever see.

The feds were late, as usual.

Burch had called from the plane in early afternoon.

“Had a problem.”

“Tell me.”

“We hit the condo, the Dickerson-Foley-whoever condo in Riverdale. The Foleys are retirees, eighty-four and eighty-two, respectively. Never had the Visa account the RV was charged to. That account was active, but was paid online, no paperwork, so they never knew. The driver’s license data goes to Clark Foley, but he hasn’t had a license for four years.”

“What, they pulled these old people at random?”

Damn, damn, and double damn.

Her fist clenched the cell phone in a death grip.

“Worse than that. We showed the Foleys the Dickerson photos, and they identified them as a couple named Smith who live in the same building, directly below the Foleys. We got a new warrant and hit that place. But it was empty, except for one of those cheap cell-phone-linked security systems. As soon as our guys cracked the door, a silent alarm went to a cell-phone number. So the Dickersons, whoever they are, could look at full-color moving pictures of our guys coming in. We didn’t find it for three or four minutes after kicking the door.”

“Shit,” she muttered.

“One good thing. We got a quick fix on the cell phone, which was in Green Valley, Arizona, about forty-five miles north of the border. It looks like they’re making tracks for Mexico. We were on to the border guys in ten minutes, and they had pictures five minutes after that. I think we got a good shot at them.”

Burch told her that he’d be arriving after four o’clock.

“My plane didn’t have quite the speed or the range that I thought. I kinda got shuffled off to a cheaper machine. We had to stop in Minneapolis to refuel and it took forever.”

“What about your SWAT team?”

“They should be there before me, but not much.”

VIRGIL GOT THE CALL.

The Dickersons, who were really Ned and Jennifer Boniface, last known address Bakersfield, California, had been picked up, without incident just before reaching the border. The kids with them were safe and being identified, each with a story to tell. No word yet on if they were part of a bigger ring, but the feds were checking. He and Johnson set up across the river from Drake’s house at midafternoon. The BMW was still parked in the yard, but the Jeep was missing.

He called Pescoli to tell her.

“We’ve got the plates, we’ll find them. Problem is, about everybody who doesn’t drive a pickup out here drives a Jeep.”

“You exaggerate.”

But then she drove one. Fairly new, with lots of power, fastest model available.

“Maybe so, but not much,” he said.

“I’ll tell you something, Virgil. I saw some of the film that Drake apparently shot, stuff that was filmed for sure in that back cabin. It’s sick. The worst.” She hesitated, felt that same terrible feeling she had when she’d viewed the porn. “I’ve dealt with a lot in my career as a cop, but this is worse than murder. Drake is worse than a killer.”

“Let’s not lose sight of the fact that he probably did murder somebody in cold blood.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” Pescoli said. “It’s the homicide that will get him the needle.”

“When was the last time someone was executed by the State of Montana?” he said. “I wouldn’t count on that. But we can put him away for life.”

“Not good enough,” she said.

REGAN MET THE SWAT TEAM on the tarmac at Bert Mooney airport. Burch arrived forty-five minutes later. They all shook hands, went to a prearranged conference room where Burch reviewed the action with the SWAT team, which had been briefed before leaving Denver, and then they moved off to three waiting Chevy Tahoes, rented from the local car agencies, loaded the team’s gear, and found the road to Grizzly Falls. She led the way in her own Jeep with Burch in the passenger seat.

He was a slender, tough-looking man who, it turned out, had spent six years with the Navy SEALs before joining the FBI. He skillfully extracted a brief autobiography from her and told her a little about himself. He was smart and engaging, but she got the impression that he badly wanted to be in on the raid for bureaucratic reasons. Taking down the knotty pine filmmaker would be a major coup, a step toward promotion.

Nothing wrong with that, she thought.

Except it annoyed her.

She and the SWAT team would have pulled off the raid in broad daylight, if they’d left without waiting for Burch.

Her cell phone rang.

“Got a break,” Flowers said as she answered and negotiated a curve as they headed west. “Drake just got back. He’s around behind the house where we can’t see him, but I got a good look at him when he came in. He’s there. Where the hell are you guys?”

“We’re still about an hour out,” she said.

“We could take him right now,” Flowers said. “You could get the sheriff to deputize me.”

“Let me check on that,” she said, though it galled her to think Blackwater would be in on the takedown.

She passed Flowers’s suggestion on to Burch, who shook his head. “No way. I spent some more time reading Flowers’s file on the way here, and he has a way of making simple things complicated. Let me talk to him.”

She handed the phone to Burch. “We appreciate what you’re doing, but we mostly need intel. Eyes on the place. You were an army guy, right? So you know what we need.”

She thought she heard a protest from Flowers, but Burch clicked off and she kept driving, her jaw set, her fingers tight on the wheel, the Montana countryside flying past, the sun sinking lower in the sky.

Flowers called back forty minutes later and said, “Drake just went up to Weeks’s place in the Jeep. We could see him turn in, but we can’t see what’s going on.”

“Call us back if anything changes,” she said and Burch nodded.

As the miles had passed he’d grown more silent, his eyes steady on the road, he, like she, getting ready.