“He wouldn’t have given up anyone,” Ritter said. “Jim was loyal to his pals. Almost pathologically loyal. It was about all he had left, after his time in the military and with Heracles. He’d gone to jail, before he’d let a friend down. Or died.”
“But would all of those people have known that? They are not the kind of people who think in those terms . . . Not people like Parrish or Claxson. They take care of themselves.”
“Claxson . . . if he had to make a choice between himself and his own kids, if he had any, his kids would be dead meat,” Ritter said.
Lucas poked a finger at him. “Exactly. Those are the guys we want. We’ll take the triggers, too, but they’re not the ones who are driving this thing, the assassination attempt.”
“Do you know the other people involved in these . . . actions?”
“I think I do,” Lucas said. “I think there were two more triggers, two more managers, and somebody who pulls the whole train.”
“Would that be Senator Grant from Minnesota?”
Lucas tipped his head. “Where are you getting this?”
“Like I said, I know these guys, and they know me and trust me. When I was fishing around, I heard all kinds of things. You couldn’t take any of it to court; it’s all rumor, but rumors from guys who are professional intelligence operators, and their rumors are better than most. There are some hints that if things work out, Heracles could have its own office at the White House.”
* * *
—
THEY LOOKED at each other, then Lucas took his hand away from the PPQ and rubbed the back of his neck, and asked, “How far can I trust you? To hear what I have to say and not spread it around? Even if it’ll help you understand what happened to Jim.”
“I wouldn’t tell a soul,” Ritter said. “I mean that: nobody would hear a word from me, of what was said in this room.”
Lucas looked at him for a couple of beats, and Ritter added, “Look, I went to the Academy. I’ll be a general someday, if I don’t screw up, and so far I haven’t. Jim didn’t finish college, joined the Army, took an entirely different path. He wound up with Delta. He was over there way too long, maybe killed too many people, including, you know, civilians. Women. Kids. His circle got too tight; he’d die for the people in the circle, but, outside it, he didn’t give a shit about anything. That pushed him out of the Army. He killed one too many people who didn’t actually need it. The Army gets fussy about stuff like that.”
“So he signed up with Heracles?”
“Yes. And he went right back to killing. I guess he was a bad guy, in the end, but he was my brother. And he was close with the Heracles operators—the operators, the guys around him, not the managers. If you told them to kill him, they were like Jim: they wouldn’t do it. They might kill the guy who asked.”
Lucas shifted in the chair. “That’s interesting.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. I need to find somebody who knows what happened, or has a good idea about what happened, but would be loyal to Jim.”
Ritter nodded. “Now, tell me the truth: did Senator Grant buy these hits?”
Lucas said, “I can’t prove it, but I believe so. I believe she worked through Parrish, who is one of her aides and works with the Senate Intelligence Committee.”
Ritter shook his head in disgust. “Parrish is tight with Claxson. I can give you names of people who can tell you that, if they decide to, people who work with Heracles but were close to Jim.”
“That would be a great help, if we ever get to to a trial,” Lucas said.
“Are you going to get Grant?”
“If somebody gives her up.”
“That’s the only way?”
“That’s it,” Lucas said.
“Well, shit.” Ritter grunted, slapped his thighs, and said, “I’m going to stand up now. I don’t have a hideout gun—or whatever you cops call them. I’m leaving.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m in a BOQ over in Arlington, but I’m moving to a motel tomorrow. My parents got here from Nebraska this afternoon . . . They’re falling apart . . . My mother is . . . My father’s mostly taking care of my mother. I’m trying to take care of both of them.”
“I understand. Let me give you an email,” Lucas said. “I need a secure email from you, if you have one.”
“Of course I have one,” Ritter said. “Not even the Army knows about it.”
* * *
—
WHEN THEY’D EXCHANGED emails and cell phone numbers, Lucas asked, “When will you be talking with your friends again? Over at Heracles?”
“I’m going out to lunch with a couple of them tomorrow,” Ritter said. “We’re all talking about what happened to Jim. People are worried about Heracles and what’s going on there. They’re worried that if there’s trouble, some of it will stick to them. Word is, some of them have already split. Left the country.”
“Will you call me if you hear something?” Lucas asked. “I don’t know what your situation is over there. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I’m not ready to sign up as a spy—and I really don’t want to talk to the FBI. I’m talking to you because in the stuff I read, those newspaper stories from Minnesota, you sounded like a guy I could deal with. If the FBI gets involved, if they detain me on suspicion of anything, I’m not going to get my stars. I’m not going to make colonel. My career will be over. So I’ve got to be careful.”
Lucas nodded, observing Ritter’s escalating intensity. “If these guys go after Smalls again, how would they do it?”
“I don’t know.” Ritter threw up his hands. “They could do it a million different ways. I know a SEAL who specialized in snatching Arab terrorists off their tea stools, hurting them bad enough that they couldn’t resist, or trigger a bomb hidden in a vest, while the rest of his team covered him. He could put a man on the floor, with broken bones, in two seconds—literally. Two seconds. I saw him do that. There are all kinds of techniques—they could run Smalls off the road again; they could break his neck and throw him down the stairs in his home; they could kill him with alcohol poisoning or an overdose—and never leave a mark on him. They all have some level of sniper training. Jim wasn’t the best at it because, basically, he wasn’t a sniper, but he could put a .338 through your chest at a thousand meters, if he had time to think about distances and angles and it wasn’t too windy. There are guys at Heracles who are snipers, and they work at it all the time. They like sniping way better than sex . . . If you were sitting at a desk by a window, they could hit you from a mile out.”
“Okay. But be careful. If you hear anything operational, call me right away. I’ve got some hard-core guys here myself, and I can get more if I need them.” He thought for a moment, and added, “If you hear any more about Jack Parrish, he could be key. Or John McCoy. Or Kerry Moore. And Claxson, of course.”
“I know those names, McCoy and Moore, from asking around. They’re the ones, huh?”
“Yup, I think so.” He almost told Ritter that four Heracles operators, including McCoy, had been arrested, but he didn’t trust the man quite that much. Instead, he said, “One more thing. Jim apparently had a girlfriend—or a girl he was friendly with anyway—slender, very good shape. She knows how to get a rare concealable submachine gun, and knows how to use it and isn’t afraid to. Looks, to me, like a pro.”
“What’d she do?” Ritter asked.
Lucas told him about the shooting in the hallway, and Ritter said, “Oh, jeez, that was her? It’s all over the news . . . They say nobody was hurt, though.”
“No, but she scared the shit out of quite a few people, including me.”
“I can’t tell you much about her. I’ve met her, once, and she didn’t want to talk to me. I think she and Jim were in bed together, but she didn’t want people to know it.”
“What’s her name?”
Ritter shook his head. “She was introduced to me as ‘just Suzie.’ Jim seemed to like her—a lot. Like marriage a lot. Made me happy, made me think we were getting him back, so I pried. I can’t swear to any of this, but I believe she’s covert CIA, the division called SAD/SOG. Special Activities Division/Special Operations Group, which is their paramilitary wing.”