Read Online The Killing Season by Mason Cross - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Mason Cross
Tags: Adventure/Thriller
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taking a sip of her own coffee. “Good at finding people,” she said. This time she said it like it was a world-famous corporate motto: like good to the last drop , or king of beers , or something. “So what makes you so sure he’ll pick specific targets this time?”
“What makes you so sure he won’t?”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t fit with what we know about him. With what he did before.”
“It fits,” I said, thinking about Mosul. “I know the type.”
Banner said nothing for a minute, then she asked, “Anything you don’t know?”
I smiled, because that exact phrase and the expression on her face brought back a memory of someone else. A far more pleasant memory this time.
“Plenty of things,” I said.
“Why are you smiling like that?”
“You just . . . reminded me of someone for a second.”
I looked back in Castle’s direction again. He was still on the phone, still pacing. The young agent was approaching him, a pained look on his face. I lip-read “I gotta go,” saw Castle hang up.
The agent began talking to Castle, his hands held out defensively like he was negotiating with an aggravated suspect armed with a chain saw. Banner had been looking at me, but now followed the line of my gaze.
The young agent was pointing in the direction of the mobile command center. After he finished speaking, Castle took off at a run.
Banner and I both slid off the hood of the car and jogged after the two men. My mind was racing, trying to predict what had happened. Another shooting, almost certainly. Maybe they’d found Sandra Veldon’s body. Whatever it was, the urgency meant one thing: Somebody new was dead.
But this time, I was wrong.
We reached the door to the command center and stepped up and inside. There was a bank of flat-screen monitors on one wall, all eyes fixed on the one that was tuned to CNN . Nobody had thought to turn up the volume, but perhaps that was because they didn’t need sound.
The screen was split into panels, like a comic book page. Two small squares on the left, one long vertical rectangle on the right. Top left: aerial footage of our current position. Bottom left: a county cop manning the barrier in a field somewhere, almost certainly the scene of the prison escape. Right-hand side: Caleb Wardell’s mug shot.
Bottom of the screen, two words, white on red: breaking news .
12
3:02 p.m.
To my surprise, Castle took the latest development pretty well. After the initial shock, after the questions about who had leaked the story and why, he, Banner, and everyone else seemed to be able to let it go and get back to the task at hand. I decided that made sense—the media blackout was not a natural facet of the manhunt, but rather a complication that had been imposed from above. From that perspective, the media getting ahold of the story was almost a blessing. It took unnecessary pressure off, meaning the task force no longer had to operate with one hand tied behind its collective back.
And, as the day progressed, it became apparent that the story hadn’t been leaked at all. The story had broken first on the website of the Chicago Tribune . A staff reporter named Mike Whitford had received a call that morning from somebody purporting to be Caleb Wardell. And if it hadn’t been Wardell, it had been somebody equally well informed, because one thing was clear: Whitford had his facts straight in the story. Everything from the details of the escape to the position of the shot that had killed the deliveryman. The detail was accurate, the message concise and pitched perfectly to a mass audience: Wardell was back. Five men dead already, and he was just getting started.
Castle spoke to Donaldson at length by phone. The SAC was not happy. But there was work to be done, and so it got done. The focus of activity had switched to locating Sandra Veldon’s Ford Taurus, but everything else that had been set in motion was still ongoing, with an added load of media briefings.
Two
“What makes you so sure he won’t?”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t fit with what we know about him. With what he did before.”
“It fits,” I said, thinking about Mosul. “I know the type.”
Banner said nothing for a minute, then she asked, “Anything you don’t know?”
I smiled, because that exact phrase and the expression on her face brought back a memory of someone else. A far more pleasant memory this time.
“Plenty of things,” I said.
“Why are you smiling like that?”
“You just . . . reminded me of someone for a second.”
I looked back in Castle’s direction again. He was still on the phone, still pacing. The young agent was approaching him, a pained look on his face. I lip-read “I gotta go,” saw Castle hang up.
The agent began talking to Castle, his hands held out defensively like he was negotiating with an aggravated suspect armed with a chain saw. Banner had been looking at me, but now followed the line of my gaze.
The young agent was pointing in the direction of the mobile command center. After he finished speaking, Castle took off at a run.
Banner and I both slid off the hood of the car and jogged after the two men. My mind was racing, trying to predict what had happened. Another shooting, almost certainly. Maybe they’d found Sandra Veldon’s body. Whatever it was, the urgency meant one thing: Somebody new was dead.
But this time, I was wrong.
We reached the door to the command center and stepped up and inside. There was a bank of flat-screen monitors on one wall, all eyes fixed on the one that was tuned to CNN . Nobody had thought to turn up the volume, but perhaps that was because they didn’t need sound.
The screen was split into panels, like a comic book page. Two small squares on the left, one long vertical rectangle on the right. Top left: aerial footage of our current position. Bottom left: a county cop manning the barrier in a field somewhere, almost certainly the scene of the prison escape. Right-hand side: Caleb Wardell’s mug shot.
Bottom of the screen, two words, white on red: breaking news .
12
3:02 p.m.
To my surprise, Castle took the latest development pretty well. After the initial shock, after the questions about who had leaked the story and why, he, Banner, and everyone else seemed to be able to let it go and get back to the task at hand. I decided that made sense—the media blackout was not a natural facet of the manhunt, but rather a complication that had been imposed from above. From that perspective, the media getting ahold of the story was almost a blessing. It took unnecessary pressure off, meaning the task force no longer had to operate with one hand tied behind its collective back.
And, as the day progressed, it became apparent that the story hadn’t been leaked at all. The story had broken first on the website of the Chicago Tribune . A staff reporter named Mike Whitford had received a call that morning from somebody purporting to be Caleb Wardell. And if it hadn’t been Wardell, it had been somebody equally well informed, because one thing was clear: Whitford had his facts straight in the story. Everything from the details of the escape to the position of the shot that had killed the deliveryman. The detail was accurate, the message concise and pitched perfectly to a mass audience: Wardell was back. Five men dead already, and he was just getting started.
Castle spoke to Donaldson at length by phone. The SAC was not happy. But there was work to be done, and so it got done. The focus of activity had switched to locating Sandra Veldon’s Ford Taurus, but everything else that had been set in motion was still ongoing, with an added load of media briefings.
Two
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