She saw it at the last possible second: movement to her right. Then she was blindsided. She tumbled heels over ass, kept rolling on purpose, and popped to her feet in a controlled squat, her Glock out and pointed at the man who’d nailed her.
Only thing was his weapon was out and pointed at her.
“FBI!” she barked, mad with fury. “Drop the gun. Do it!”
“Army CID!” the man barked right back. “Put your weapon down. Now!”
The two were frozen, staring at each other for the longest time.
The man was over six three, ramrod straight, about two hundred extremely fit pounds, and also instantly familiar to Pine. She blinked rapidly, as though hoping it would not turn out to be who she thought it was. It didn’t work.
She lowered her weapon. “Puller?”
John Puller holstered his regulation M11 pistol. He looked equally stunned and was shaking his head. “Pine?”
Tony Vincenzo was long gone.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked.
He looked past her, in the direction of where Vincenzo was headed. “I was here to make an arrest.”
She blanched and looked over her shoulder as the truth hit her. “Crap! Tony Vincenzo?”
He nodded, frowning. “Long in the works, Atlee. And you, unfortunately, walked right into the middle of it.”
Chapter 3
THE COFFEE SHOP, the sign outside said, had been in business since 1954. It held cracked red vinyl seats, pasty linoleum flooring, and scarred wooden-backed booths. The kitchen, glimpsed through the pass window, had pots and pans and grease that looked about as old as the restaurant. What it lacked in ambience and cleanliness, it didn’t really make up for with anything else, but maybe that was the point of a beloved local hangout. A few elderly customers were dawdling over their meals and looking at their smartphones.
Pine and Puller sat facing each other in one of the booths, both cradling cups of coffee.
Next to Puller was a man in his early thirties, and who had been introduced to her as CID Special Agent Ed McElroy. He was working on Puller’s team in the Vincenzo case and had been there to help take the man into custody.
“So you two go way back, I guess,” said McElroy.
Puller nodded and glanced at Pine. “You want to tell him?”
Pine took a sip of her coffee. “Puller wasn’t a chief warrant officer yet. And I’d only been with the Bureau about four years. I was still on the east coast back then. I’m assigned out near the Grand Canyon now. Anyway, I was appointed to serve on a joint task force with the Army. A businessman the Bureau was investigating for bribing public officials managed to get his hooks into a couple of senior Army officers.”
Puller took up the story when Pine paused and glanced at him.
He said, “The ‘former’ generals were court-martialed and spent some time reflecting on their sins in the custody of the military branch they once served.” He paused and shot Pine a look. “It got dicey a couple of times.”
“How so?” asked McElroy.
Pine said, “Well, turns out the businessman had ties to a group of mercenaries from overseas. Really bad dudes with no problem killing anybody they were paid to. How many times did they try to kill us, Puller?”
“Three. Four if you count the car bomb that we found before it went off.”
“Damn,” said McElroy. “And what happened to this ‘businessman’?”
Puller said, “He’s having a wonderful time in a federal lockup and will be for pretty much the rest of his life.”
Pine glanced at Puller. “I’m really sorry for blowing your bust.”
“You had no way of knowing. Just bad luck all around.”
“So, you were chasing Vincenzo for crimes committed at Fort Dix?”
“Among other things,” replied Puller, setting his coffee cup down. “Ed and I have been on this sucker for about a month and Tony Vincenzo is right in the middle of it.”
“How long have you been in the Army?” she asked McElroy.
“Going on fifteen years, the last five with CID. Been working with Chief Puller for about nine months now.”
“You have a family?”
“Back in Detroit. Wife and two kids. She’s used to deployments but they were hard. This job is a little more flexible.”
Pine turned to Puller. “So you were about to bring the hammer down on Tony? How come?”
“He’s part of a drug ring operating out of Fort Dix. He works in the motor pool. A good mechanic by all accounts, but apparently his pay wasn’t enough to support his lifestyle. He got hooked up with some really bad guys on the outside.”
“He’s not military then?”
“No. But he was committing crimes on a military installation, which is why I’m involved. Dix is technically under the jurisdiction of the Air Force Air Mobility Command. Base operations are performed by the Eighty-Seventh Air Base Wing, and it provides management as well.”
“But if the Air Force oversees it, where do you come in?” asked Pine.
“It’s a joint base installation, so there are Army and Navy elements there as well. Each branch retains complete control of their commands there. Vincenzo was employed by the Army, so the problem fell to me. He also recruited some stupid Army grunts as part of his plot, so that falls to me, too. The Air Force is in the background only. Army carries the load on this one.”
“Boy, and I thought the Bureau’s structure was unwieldy.”
“The Army out-complicates everybody,” noted Puller matter-of-factly. “And is very proud of that.”
“Was he selling into the military, then, from these outside sources?”
Puller nodded. “We believe so at least. And the readiness of our military isn’t helped by soldiers who happen to be druggies or who can be blackmailed by enemies of this country into doing stuff they should never do.”
“I can see that.”
“And why did you want to see Vincenzo? You working a case involving him? We might want to team up then.”
“No.” She glanced at McElroy for a moment. “It’s personal, John. It…it has to do with my sister.”
“Vincenzo did something to your sister?” said Puller.
“No. This goes way back to his grandfather.”
It was a long story, but Pine managed it in a string of succinct sentences chock-full of information, including what she had recently discovered in Georgia about Ito Vincenzo having taken her sister. She didn’t want to burden Puller with her problems, but she had great respect for him as both a person and an investigator. And it just felt good to get it off her chest.
“Damn,” said Puller when she’d finished.
“Roger that,” said McElroy. “Really sorry that all happened to your family, ma’am. That’s just awful. Nobody should have to go through that.”
“Thanks.”
Puller said, “Well, Tony Vincenzo’s old man is a bad egg, too. He’s in federal prison at Fort Dix.”
“Yeah, I knew that. But all I wanted to ask Tony was where his grandfather Ito was. If he’s even still alive. Since the house is in Teddy’s name, he may not be.”