"Don! Keep breathing, man!"
You keep breathing. This is damn hard work.
"Tell him about the trail we found, David. That'll keep him going. He'll refuse to go under, just to hear what you have to say."
You two found something? What? Gonna crack this case open?
"How's Walker?"
"They're putting him in the ambulance right now, Colby. They think Don got the worst of it."
Oh, good. I'd hate to think that Walker is having the same tough time trying to breathe. What the hell happened?
There was a body leaning over him. "Early signs, Don, of somebody rigging your truck with a smoke bomb to go off when you pulled on the door. Forensics has been called; they're going to be looking to identify what was used in the smoke. The docs at the hospital are already primed to get that information as soon as we have it. You're going to be all right, Don."
If you're going to lie to me, David, do it a little more convincingly.
A voice in the background, one he didn't recognize. "I don't think tubing him will do any good, Rampart. I'd like permission to hit him with another amp of epi."
A small sting in his thigh.
"Stay with me, Don. Keep fighting."
You keep fighting. Me, I think I'm going to take a nap, whether I want to…or not…
Help. I've got to get help.
It hurt. It hurt to move, and it hurt to stay still.
I have to call for help.
His arm hurt. His chest hurt. His whole body hurt, but most of all his arm. The one wouldn't work but Charlie, inch by small inch, forced the other hand to flip open the cell phone that was still nestled there.
Thank heaven for speed dial. It meant seven fewer digits to tackle.
"You have reached the voicemail of Special Agent Don Eppes. Please leave a message, and I'll return your call."
"Don…help…"
The cell phone tumbled from his grasp.
Amazing how such a short period of not breathing could turn him into jelly. Even picking up a glass of water to soothe his throat seemed beyond his abilities at the moment. Someone had clearly come along and glued every limb of his body to the white linen sheets on this hospital bed, because Don felt unable to move.
David understood. He picked up the glass, adjusting the straw so that Don could draw in some of the liquid. It wasn't cold enough, but that didn't matter at the moment. Don could only manage a few sips before his lungs demanded its fair share of oxygen.
There was something else that Don needed to know. He forced his sore throat to cooperate. "Walk…er…?"
David proved once again that he'd passed his FBI-approved course in telepathy. "Doing better than you, Don," he reassured his boss. "You caught the worst of it. The bomb was located under the edge of the driver's side door, wired to the handle. You hit the unlock switch, and it went off. Walker was able to call in for help before he was overcome."
"Any…body…"
"Anybody else hurt? No." David set the glass back onto the table. "The gas dissipated, and dispersed onto the ground. Forensics vacuumed it up, and sprayed the area down with water. We're keeping the parking lot clear for another couple of days. One of the Forensics guys said that if we don't see any pigeons gasping for breath, it should be okay to use after that."
"Who…?"
"We don't know yet. Forensics is still working on it, but we don't have many answers. No fingerprints, of course, and the Suburban is going to need some serious time in the shop before it's ready to rumble. The bomb itself looks pretty makeshift, from the remnants that Forensics recovered. Somebody who knew what they were doing slapped it together in a hurry from spare parts lying around and tucked it under the bottom of the Suburban."
"Scared…"
"Yes, we've got someone at SW Chemicals running scared. The question is: who?" David leaned over. "Colby and I did a little more digging into Hathaway and Vorgen. We're running into international roadblocks on Vorgen, but some business accounts linked to Hathaway have shown some hefty transfers of money. But, Don, this is the part that doesn't make sense: the money is flowing out, not in. If Hathaway is the one selling the chemical formulas, where is the money going?"
Don didn't have an answer to that, and his sore throat was grateful.
David moved on. "I talked to your docs; they're going to spring you tomorrow. They want to keep an eye on you overnight, just in case. Worried about pneumonia, or something like that. Colby wanted to call your dad, but I persuaded him not to. I thought you'd probably want to spare him the scare, since you're going to be all right. You can tell him later, if you want. Or not at all."
"Thanks…"
"I tried calling Charlie, to see if he's come through on the invoice formula stuff, but he's not picking up. I figure Colby and I can swing by his office later, see what he's got."
Don grunted, and instantly regretted it. He broke out into a spasm of coughing.
David offered him another sip of water. "In the meantime, Colby and I will follow up on these two angles: where is the money going from SW Chemicals, and who planted the bomb in your vehicle?"
"Care…ful…"
David grimaced. "You bet we're going to be careful. Colby's already looking under his own car three times before he touches the door handle, and I'm about ready to demand a rookie to sit in my own car and watch the thing while I work." He squeezed Don's shoulder. "You rest, boss, and we'll be back to get you in the morning."
He remained completely undisturbed. No wildlife entered the devastated area to investigate the unmoving body, leaking blood into the ground. Three small birds flew past and didn't tarry; there was no reason to, no berries to eat and no bugs to snatch off of the water.
All of which meant that Charlie didn't move. Movement meant the deliberate infliction of pain, and that was beyond Charlie's capabilities.
Colby glowered. "I hate looking at numbers," he announced. "Why couldn't we get someone else to do this?"
"We tried. We haven't been able to get hold of Charlie."
"You know what I mean, David."
"Going through the books? Don't you remember how the FBI nailed Al Capone, by convicting him of tax evasion, by looking at his accounts?" David leaned back in his chair, equally as disgusted at their task but unwilling to admit it in front of Colby. "I presume that this means that you're hitting the same dead ends that I am." He clicked them off on his fingers. "One: we have fifty thousand dollars going to a Swiss bank account in the name of ZCR Consulting. Two months later, we have another seventy five thousand also going to ZCR Consulting, along with fifty to VBN Consulting. SW Chemicals seems to be doing a lot of consulting, with very few reports or activity to show for it."
Colby nodded. "They even consulted Charlie. Maybe we should investigate him."
"Not the same thing, Granger, and you know it. Charlie left a report. I tried to read it, and got lost before I finished the first page." David looked at the clock on the wall, noting the late hour. "I'd really like to have something to hand over to Don in the morning."
"Yeah." Colby's face turned grim, thinking about his boss lying flat on his back in a hospital. "This is getting personal." He glanced around the room. It was a conference room in SW Chemicals, a place where the pair of FBI agents had been stashed with computers and temporary passwords to delve into the accountings of the target company. The set up was a compromise: David Sinclair had demanded access to the accounting department's work. Hathaway had objected, and David had retaliated by threatening to get a court order to remove all of the computers in the department. Hathaway had given in, but not graciously. The result was that the two FBI agents were working to dig out the SW Chemical cash flows. Colby stroked his chin. "Maybe we should get some help from the Walking Dead in Accounting back at FBI Headquarters…hey."
"Hey, what?" David looked up.
"I don't think that this is the whole story."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, look at this." Colby gestured at the computer in general. "I mean, if you were somebody receiving hush money or whatever is going on here, would your name be on the account? Hey, look at me, Mr. XYZ or whatever. I'm getting money from SW Chemicals to arrange a hit on George Remini."
"You sound like you're going somewhere with this," David observed.
"Yeah, I'm going somewhere with it. I'm going upstairs, to those chicks with the desks outside of the big cheeses' offices. I think I want to look at their appointment calendars."
David frowned. "You think that Hathaway may have met with someone with these initials? Colby, that's crazy. Nobody would be that stupid, to leave a trace like that." He trailed off. "Let's check it out."
Don sat down to pull his shirt over his head. It wasn't that he was going to topple over, mind you, if he tried to remain standing at the side of the hospital bed, but taking a chance on that prospect in front of David and Colby would be a good way to collect a humiliated red face if he'd over-estimated his capabilities. "What did you come up with?"
David took the lead. "More questions than answers, Don. We found several cash dispersements that no one can account for. They go to Swiss bank accounts with patently fictitious names. Then we lose the trail. We put Col. Caruthers on that aspect; she's working with her Washington connections to put pressure on the Swiss."
"But…?" Don prompted, hearing the next phrase coming.
Colby took over. "We checked out the appointment calendars for Remini, Hathaway, and for Herr Vorgen. There was nothing on Remini's that looked suspicious, and Vorgen didn't have anything worth mentioning—he only got into town last Tuesday, and nothing for two months before that—but Hathaway had meetings with a couple of guys with the same initials as the consultants: ZCR and VCN."
Don nodded, wondering if he had the energy to stand up. "Nice work, guys. Who are those two with the initials? Anything?"
David frowned. "They're a couple of low level types at the state EPA. Not exactly the international black market dealers we were hoping for."
"Go betweens?" Okay, he had to stand to zip up the fly to his pants. Don worked at it, grouchily grateful for the steadying hand that David reached out.
"Maybe. We've got people on them, researching bank accounts." David changed the subject. "You got food at your place? We can stop and pick up something on the way while we take you home."
"Enough." Did he really? Don couldn't remember. It wasn't as though he did a lot of cooking in his apartment. His food preparation tended toward the task of throwing out the stuff with blue mold and then calling out for Chinese. Not a big deal. He didn't feel much like eating anyway. He'd crawl into bed, sleep most of the day and night away, then get up and finish off this case. "Anything on the bomb on my truck?"
"Yes and no." It was Colby's turn. "Forensics isn't finished, but they handed over some preliminaries. It looks like someone inside of SW Chemicals is responsible. They had easy access to the parking lot where you put the Suburban, and the chemicals used are in good supply inside the SW Chemicals facility. With the kind of security they've got on the parking lot, it would have been a cakewalk for someone to plant the bomb. Heck, I could have macgyvered something together inside of half an hour without even knowing where they stashed each chemical component."
"Which means that we've narrowed it down to some four hundred suspects," David summed up unhappily.
"Not quite," Don told him. "They'd have to know at least a little bit about chemistry. We can probably rule out the accounting department and the loading dock." He sat back down on the bed, trying to make it look deliberate and not desperate. "Hathaway would know. Vorgen, for certain. And it was half an hour before Hathaway arrived to ask what Walker and I were doing on the clerical floor," he remembered. "He would have had time to do it."
"But not any real motive," David pointed out. "Until he spoke to you, he didn't know that you had figured out that the formula was being smuggled out through the invoices."
It was all very puzzling, and Don said so. "Both Walker and I thought that Hathaway and Vorgen were clean. Neither of us got even a hint of guilt. Not over this. They both were horrified to think that classified information was being smuggled out. Speaking of which, how about Charlie's end? Did he come up with the next bit of coded formula that would be on an invoice?"
Colby shrugged. "Don't know. He wasn't in his office, and he's not picking up his cell."
"We just figured that he was zoning out on numbers again," David added. "Let me try him." He pulled out his cell, and hit the speed dial. "Nope," he reported. "Still not picking up. Maybe he's teaching a class right now," he offered.
Don frowned. "This is national security," he complained. "Let's swing by his office on the way to my place and drag the answer out of him."
David didn't like that answer. "How about we drop you off at your place first, and then Colby and I will drag it out of him?" he suggested. "Hate to break it to you, Don, but you're on medical leave for the next day or so."
"And you look like crap," Colby added helpfully.
Don grimaced. "Gee, thanks. All right, but if you need help persuading Charlie to cooperate—"
"We'll call you," David assured him.
Don looked around. "Where's the rest of my stuff? I'm ready to blow this place."
"I took charge of your weapon," David told him. "The rest should be in the bag with your clothes."
"Here it is." Colby handed the white plastic sack over, having found it in the small closet of the hospital room. He looked inside. "Uh, I think your shirt is toast. Literally. It looks like they cut it off you. The parts that weren't scorched from the blast, that is."
"Yeah." Don chose not to rub the areas on his chest where some of the scorch marks had gotten a little too close. The redness would fade, the docs had told him, but they would be painful during the healing process, and they'd given him some ointment to help. "What about Walker?"
"They let him go home last night," David reminded him. "He wasn't as close as you to the blast. He's planning on doing some desk work today, heading up the group researching those EPA guys."
"Maybe I should join him—"
"Maybe you should take it easy for another day, like the doctors told you to." David cut him off. "Colby and I will keep you posted on any developments."
Don dug in the plastic sack. "Where is—here it is." He pulled out his cell, glancing at it before slipping it into his pocket. Then he hurriedly pulled it out, realizing what he'd seen. "Hey, somebody left a message. It's from Charlie," he clarified, looking at the tiny screen. "Hold up, guys. Maybe he has an answer. It's from yesterday afternoon," he added, tapping to get to the proper access point. "Must have been just after I…"
His face went white.
"Don?" Colby stepped forward.
Don fumbled with the button to put the tiny box on speaker phone. Charlie's voice emerged, tinny through the small speaker.
"Don…help…"
