COLONEL JEB WHITAKER’S Honda Blackbird was in the same U.S. Naval Academy parking lot as before when Sampson and I checked around two that afternoon. Sampson walked past the powerful motorcycle, pretended to admire the bike, and planted a GPS tracking device under its rear fender.
We knew a whole lot more about Whitaker now, and, like Tommy McGrath had felt about the Phoenix Club, the more we learned, the more we wanted to know.
Colonel Whitaker had a stellar record, first off. He’d graduated from the Naval Academy in the upper quarter of his class and later won the U.S. Navy Cross for valor, risking his life repeatedly to bring wounded Marines off the streets of war-torn Fallujah. Then shrapnel from an IED nearly cut off his leg, ending his tour of duty.
The colonel had subsequently earned a doctorate from the War College and then joined the faculty of the Naval Academy, where he taught strategy and amphibious warfare. He was known as a charismatic teacher and was rated highly by students on several faculty-review sites we found on the web.
On paper, Whitaker did not seem like someone we should have been looking at. But then we found out his wife had died three years before in a car accident, hit head-on by a drunken, high twenty-two-year-old who had been not only speeding but texting.
Whitaker’s Honda Blackbird turned out to be the fastest production motorcycle available on the planet, capable of blowing the doors off a Maserati. And Whitaker knew how to drive it. He’d raced motorcycles earlier in his life.
Sampson and I had debated bringing the colonel in for questioning but decided in the end to hang back, follow him, and learn more before we got in his face. Whitaker helped us out by appearing forty minutes after we’d set up surveillance on the Blackbird. He limped to the motorcycle, put on his helmet, and set off.
We trailed Whitaker a mile back, watching his progress on an iPad connected via satellite to the GPS transmitter. We thought the colonel might go north to his home on Chesapeake Bay, but instead he headed west and drove to the George Washington University Medical Center in DC.
He parked in the visitors’ lot, and we drove into it just in time to see Whitaker walking toward the hospital. I jumped out and trotted after him.
Because of the limp, the colonel wasn’t hard to keep up with. But once we got inside the hospital, I had to hang back, and I lost Whitaker when he got an elevator. Before the doors closed, though, I heard him tell someone he was going to the ICU.
I waited a few moments. My cell beeped, alerting me to an e-mail from Judith Noble, the FBI gun tech. Subject: Remington .45.
I pressed the elevator call button, opened the e-mail, and read it. Then I read it again, trying to get my head around her conclusions. Sonofabitch, I thought. How was that possible?
The elevator dinged and the doors opened. I rode the elevator up to the ICU, thinking of all of the ramifications of the e-mail I’d just read.
Part of me wanted to back off, let Mahoney know, and stand aside, let the Feds do their job. Instead, I went to the nurses’ station, showed a nurse my badge, and asked if a Marine officer with a limp had come in. She said he was down the hall, third door on the right.
“Whose room is that?”
“That would be Mr. Potter’s,” she said. “George Potter.”
I squinted, said, “The wounded DEA agent?”
“That’s the one,” she said.
“George and I have worked together quite a bit lately. Think I’ll pay him a visit, see how he’s doing.”
CHAPTER
91
SOMETIMES IT PAYS to hang back. Other times it pays to rattle a few chains.
I didn’t knock, just stepped quietly into Potter’s room. Colonel Whitaker sat at the DEA special agent’s bedside. The patient looked waxy and sallow, but alert. The two of them were deep in a heated conversation when Potter spotted me.
He tensed, said, “Alex?”
“Came by to see how you were doing, George,” I said, ignoring his reaction. “Last time I saw you, you were hurting pretty bad.”
“I’m still hurting pretty bad,” Potter grumbled as he shifted in bed. “Do you know my old friend Jeb?”
I looked at the colonel and acted like I recognized him from somewhere but couldn’t place him.
“We met once, Dr. Cross,” Whitaker said, getting up from his chair. “In a parking lot at the Naval Academy.”
I snapped my fingers, pointed at him, and said, “That’s it. Colonel …”
“Whitaker. Jeb Whitaker.”
“Small world,” I said. “You knowing George and all.”
“Colonel Whitaker was my commander in Iraq,” Potter said. “Best damned combat officer I’ve ever seen.”
Whitaker made a dismissive flip of his hand. “That’s the painkillers talking. George was the brave one, taking a bullet like that.”
“For all the good it did Elena Guryev,” the DEA agent said, crestfallen.
I said nothing, just looked at Potter and then at Colonel Whitaker.
Potter licked his lips and asked, “You found anything new?”