Private Dublin

Chapter 15

I slept uneasily. I was back in the wreckage of my Sea Knight, the searing flames scorching my skin as my comrades cried out all around me. It took a moment for me to make the disorientating transition from dream to reality, realizing the sound of their screams was in fact my phone ringing.

I rubbed my face and sat straighter in the chair outside of Justine’s room. A nurse walked by, pushing a dispensing trolley that had morning meds laid out in neat rows. I pulled my phone from my pocket and saw Mo-bot’s name flash on-screen. The tiny clockface read 7:03 a.m.

“Yeah?” I answered.

“No good morning?” she replied.

“It’s too early.”

“Someone’s in a bad mood,” she observed.

I felt groggy but had managed a few hours of broken sleep. I rose and walked to the door of Justine’s room. Glancing in through the observation window, I saw she was fast asleep, her face flushed and relaxed, suggesting it was a deep, peaceful rest.

“Morning,” I conceded. “Is everything okay?”

“We need to meet,” Mo-bot said. “Are you at the hospital?”

“What’s going on?” I asked, stepping away from the door so as not to wake Justine.

“It’s the shooter. LAPD put out an APB, but it was too late to stop him leaving the country. He managed to escape the warehouse and there’re now photographs of him boarding a flight to Dublin, Ireland, at LAX, and... well, you need to see them. Justine too.”

“What?” I asked. “Why? Why would she need to see anything?”

“Are you at the hospital? You need to meet us,” Mo-bot pressed.

“Us?”

“Sci is coming too,” she said.

“Yeah, I’m at the hospital,” I replied.

“See you in twenty,” she said, before hanging up.

I wondered what could be so urgent and why she wanted me and Justine to see the photos from LAX. I didn’t dwell on it for too long though. I knew the time would pass more quickly if I was busy, so I grabbed the overnight bag I’d brought from home and went to the bathroom, where I brushed my teeth, had a wash and changed my clothes, opting for a lightweight black pullover and jeans. I left the men’s room looking casual but respectable, certainly not like someone who’d snatched a few hours’ sleep in a hospital corridor. I went downstairs and found a coffee shop where I ordered a double espresso, which I took back to our observation point outside of Justine’s room.

Mo-bot and Sci were waiting by the time I returned, both of them frowning and agitated.

“What is it?” I asked, recognizing the signs of trouble.

Mo-bot opened her satchel, took out her laptop and set it on the low table between the chairs.

“The APB reached the airport too late for Homeland Security to put him on the no-fly list, and he was traveling on a different passport,” Mo-bot said. An image of the Ecokiller filled her screen. He was standing at a check-in desk, smiling as he spoke to a flight attendant.

Anger rose in me at the sight of the man who had caused so much harm.

“He must have been on his way to the airport when you and Detective Mattera found him at the motel,” Sci remarked.

“Looks like he went straight there after the shootout at the warehouse,” Mo-bot said. “Smart. Taking advantage of the fact APBs and port alerts take time.”

“This isn’t our fight anymore,” I said, glancing at the door to Justine’s room. I desperately wanted to go after this man and bring him to justice, but my place was here. “We’re done.”

“You might not feel the same way when you see this,” Mo-bot told me. “I got it from the file the Department of Homeland Security shared with LAPD,” she said as she switched to another photo.

This one showed the gunman with his shoes and shirt off, being searched by a Homeland Security officer in an airport cubicle.

“Someone must have got a bad vibe from him, because he was flagged for a fingertip search,” Mo-bot said.

“Or maybe they picked up gunpowder residue on a swab,” Sci remarked.

“Either way,” Mo-bot went on, “he got asked to strip.”

She moved to another photo which showed the Ecokiller from the rear, his shoulders and back bare. The exposed skin was covered in tattoos, and I saw why Mo-bot had wanted to meet immediately. Among skulls and other insignia was a tattoo of three fleur-de-lys inside a Jerusalem Cross. The symbol was inked on his left shoulder blade, and I recognized it as the insignia of Propaganda Tre, the secret society we thought we had destroyed in Rome, and whose subsequent attempted assassination of US Secretary of Defense Eli Carver we had thwarted in Monaco. The malevolent group extended its reach into the realms of politics, finance and organized crime, and was set on using chaos as the means of acquiring ever more power and wealth.

I realized in a moment of heart-pounding, adrenalin-fuelled clarity that Justine and I had not been the chance victims of a random shooting.

We’d been the intended targets all along.