The Final Twist
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри
- Серия: Colter Shaw #3
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: G.P. Putnam's Sons
- ISBN: 978-0-525-53913-1
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «The Final Twist». Краткое содержание книги:
Following the enigmatic clues his father left behind, Shaw plays cat and mouse with the company’s sadistic enforcers, as he speeds from one gritty neighborhood in the City by the Bay to another. Suddenly, the job takes on a frightening urgency: Only by finding the courier bag can he expose the company and stop the murder of an entire family — slated to die in forty-eight hours.
With the help of an unexpected figure from his past, and with the enforcers closing the net, Shaw narrows in on the truth — and learns that the courier bag contains something unexpected: a secret that could only be described as catastrophic.
A motor scooter went by, a young Asian man on the saddle. It vanished around the corner at the end of the block. An SUV, driven by a middle-aged woman, cruised up the hill, and likewise disappeared. A woman bicyclist, in a bold, floral athletic outfit, pedaled past and started up the steep hill, her feet moving rapidly, the gears in low.
At 7:10 his phone hummed.
Shaw answered and told his brother, “They’re late.” He said he’d seen a few vehicles. Nobody suspicious and none of the drivers — or the cyclist — had been interested in the Prescott house. “Sniper action? There’s nothing in the front.”
“No one presenting in the back, and any sniper and his spotter’d need time to set up, adjust for wind, humidity. We would’ve seen them by now.”
“Are they just in good camo?”
“No. Got eyes on every usable nest. Couple of them’re perfect... Hmm. They would’ve known the Prescotts landed an hour and a half ago.”
Shaw said, “With Hogan disappearing, they’re being cautious maybe.”
“Think they called it off?”
“Ten percent chance of that. Tops.”
“Agree.”
They disconnected.
7:15.
Shaw noted the light from the Prescotts’ living room change as a commercial came on the TV.
He was checking his phone for the time — it was 7:19 — when the gut-punching explosion rocked the SUV. He looked up at the Prescott house to see flame boiling from each shattered window. Shaw climbed from the vehicle and ran toward the structure. He could get no closer than forty or fifty feet. Already the entire home was ablaze.
The device — whatever it was — had been perfectly designed. Not a soul could have gotten out of a trap like that alive.
74
They drove back in silence to the safe house, Colter Shaw and his brother.
Both men were stung by their failure.
“Goddamn it.” Shaw’s voice was bitter.
What a loss...
They had expected an assault. They had expected a C-4 or another nitrate-based bomb.
They weren’t prepared for a very different improvised explosive device — and a particularly clever one. Devereux’s new kill team had run a gas line disguised as a water pipe into the house and starting about 7:00 or so the timed system had begun filling the place with natural gas — but it was the original substance, before the foul rotten egg smell odorant, to warn of leaks, was added. No one could have detected it.
After a half hour, some type of timed igniter clicked to life. The resulting explosion had destroyed the house.
If no one had known the family was targeted for death, the incident would have been reported as an accident. The intense heat and flames would melt most of the parts of the device. Investigators would assume the real public utility pipe — now destroyed too — had cracked or suffered from a leak. The igniter would be vaporized as well.
Shaw and his brother, though, explained to the fire marshal that the explosion was meant to murder a whistleblower and his family.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell anybody?” the marshal had demanded.
Because it never occurred to them that Devereux’s men would try something like this.
And also because Shaw and Russell had inherited enough of their father’s paranoia to not trust your average civic official — at least not in the case of BlackBridge.
They now arrived at the safe house and Russell parked. He had a good touch behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. All the children did. Homeschooling didn’t provide the chance for official driver’s ed classes, but Ashton had taught Russell, Colter and Dorion the skills needed to pilot vehicles from cycles to sedans to trucks from age twelve or so. It was curious that Russell drove so conservatively. In his work for the group, he was the blunter of the two brothers; Shaw, whose Yamaha occasionally went airborne vertical and returned to earth horizontal, had an approach to his own profession that was far more cerebral.
The brothers walked to the pale blue safe house on Alvarez and into the entry hall, where the FBI’s Denver contingent was standing. Shaw nodded and introduced himself. Russell did too.
Shaw then walked into the living room and up to the four people sitting stiffly on the couch. He said to the four members of the Sam Prescott family, “We were wrong. There weren’t any shooters. It was a firebomb. Your house is gone, your car, everything. I’m sorry.”
75
Their failure was that they’d missed the chance to apprehend a single member of a dynamic entry team — someone who might be willing to testify against Devereux.
There was, of course, never any question about the family’s going home from the airport; Russell, Shaw and Ty had transported them directly to the Alvarez safe house and then sped to Forest Hill to set up the bait and arrange the takedown of the assault team.
Russell had driven the Prescotts’ sedan from the airport and had parked it in the garage so spotters would think the family was home. Ty, in his own car, parked behind the property. The men had checked the house for IEDs. When they were finished, they turned the TV and lights on to simulate occupancy, then left via the back door to wait for the attack.
A house destroyed and not a single suspect who might be willing to testify against Jonathan Stuart Devereux.
What a loss...
Shaw and Russell had done all they could do and now the case was in the hands of the FBI. The scrubbed, somber agent from the Denver office was named Darrel Gardiner. He and his team would be temporary; the agents would review BlackBridge’s records and interrogate suspects to find out if any San Francisco FBI personnel had been compromised. If not, Gardiner would hand over the case to the field office here.
With Victoria Lesston at his side, Shaw sat at the kitchen table in the safe house, as the FBI agent finished his interview with him. The agent had already spoken to Victoria, Russell and Ty.
Karin, it seemed, was the invisible woman. Her name never came up, and Shaw wasn’t going to volunteer anything about her.
Looking over his notes, Special Agent Gardiner shook his head, topped with a blond businessman’s severe trim. “Extortion, murder, attempted murder and conspiracy, burglary, hacking, eavesdropping... Well.”
Shaw got the impression there was a stronger word he wished to use but couldn’t bring himself to. Religious maybe. Or just the rigorous standards of the profession.
“Urban Improvement Plan?” A shake of his head. “They must’ve dumped thousands of kilos of drugs over the years.”
Shaw said, “Tip of the iceberg. BlackBridge’s got clients all over the world and the UIP was just one of their tactics.”
The company was being shut down, and all the facilities were being seized and searched presently. Other warrants would follow. A U.S. congressman and a congresswoman from California were already looking into voting fraud allegations because of the UIP-manipulated congressional districts in the state. The woman legislator issued a statement condemning the gerrymandering and was calling for an investigation of the politicians who had benefited from the redistricting.
One problem remained, however, a serious one. All of the offenses that Gardiner had just recited had been committed by Helms, Braxton and the BlackBridge crew. Not a bit of evidence could be laid at the feet of Jonathan Stuart Devereux or Banyan Tree Holdings.
“The best insulation I’ve ever seen,” Gardiner told Shaw and Victoria. “It’s early, I understand, but so far Banyan Tree is driven snow.”