Sigma Division

Chapter 7

Maybe he should have taken a more passive approach, he thought. Then Fry shook his head. No, the government would have found a way to discredit him. He needed the public attention, he needed the TV crews out there witnessing firsthand what would happen after speaking the truth.

He wiped his hands on his pants and heard a sound. It was some sort of jingling coming from the door. He hugged his knees and rocked back and forth, doubt once again creeping up within him.

But then the doorknob turned.

There was no backing down, he had to do it! He rummaged through his pocket and found his Zippo lighter.

Spicer’s eyes were riveted to the bank of monitors. He didn’t know where to look because there was so much activity. The radio came alive.

“I got some movement.”

The voice belonged to the sniper and Spicer quickly located his camera feed.

At the same time, they could see on the screens, the SWAT team launched their assault. A flashbang was thrown in. It exploded loudly and caused the monitor to white out.

Spicer found a different screen to watch and witnessed the cops storming in with a dynamic entry, their red laser sights cutting through the heavy smoke.

“Police! Get down! Police!”

The SWAT team rounded counters, chairs and furniture strewn about, getting closer to the subject.

Spicer had his orders. He couldn’t allow Fry to be captured. Thinking fast, he pointed at one of the screens.

“Hey, he’s reaching for his detonator!”

Darrow glanced at Spicer for a second, but there was no time to argue. He couldn’t jeopardize the life of his men. He brought his radio up.

“High, ground, green light. Take the shot now!”

The sniper became jumpy as much from the order shouted in his ear piece as from the sight of the nutjob through his scope. But that edginess only lasted a fraction of a second. He was a professional, he knew how to keep his nerves in check.

He again controlled his breathing while he gently took out the slack from the trigger. He ever so slightly moved the rifle on the tripod’s gimbal and made sure the crosshairs were directly on the subject’s head.

When he had started out in the Marines, he’d figured that he would utter clever little one-liners with each kill. It didn’t take long to realize that death was a serious business and that there was nothing funny about it. This was especially true since he’d returned from overseas.

Exhaling one last time, he finally depressed the trigger.

The .300 Win Mag round flew from the football stadium at over 3,000 feet per second, passing through the open window, and punching into associate professor Harland Fry’s head. The body was propelled forward and out of the lingering smoke from the stun grenade.

The SWAT team stopped in their tracks when the man was immobile at their feet. They all aimed their weapons down at him but it was a given that he was dead. Half his head had been blown apart by the sniper’s bullet.

“All clear,” the team leader said for the benefit of his guys.

Within seconds, the explosives technicians rushed forward to inspect the device strapped to the dead terrorist.

“Jesus…”

“What is it?”

“He didn’t have a detonator.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Both technicians pointed at the setup around Fry’s chest.

“He was using a fuse, not a detonator. It wasn’t even lit up.”

“Shit.”

The SWAT leader was understandably relieved that the level of danger hadn’t been as high as expected. On the other hand, if the sniper hadn’t been ordered to take the shot, they could have arrested this man in a matter of seconds. Somebody had fucked up.

It was sunset by the time the commotion died down. There would be one hell of an inquiry, there always was, but for the time being Spicer allowed himself to relax. For once the pressure wasn’t on him. His mission had succeeded.

He had managed to talk the authorities into accessing Fry’s private office and it was bathed in an orange glow from the setting sun. Spicer flipped through a notebook but found nothing except for scientific formulas and notes.

Captain Darrow finished a conversation with a couple of uniforms in the hallway and then joined the CIA man.

“Some tech guys reviewed the tapes, said it might’ve have looked like he had a detonator.”

“It did,” Spicer said.

The cop certainly wasn’t convinced and he started walking out. He turned around abruptly.

“You know I can’t let you take any of that stuff, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not handling this investigation but the person who will is gonna need all of that.”

The subtext was more along the lines of, I don’t know who the fuck you are but they’re making me be civil to you. Spicer chose to play dumb.

“Absolutely. Take care of yourself.”

Darrow nodded and left. The moment he was alone, Spicer turned toward the desk so his activities would be shielded him from view. As soon as he was confident that nobody from the hallway could see him, he grabbed a handful of notebooks from a drawer and shoved them down the back of his pants. He did the same with flash drives he found by the copy of the New York Express-Ledger.

Next, he got a USB key Ned had given him earlier and he inserted it into the desktop computer before switching it on. After a few chirps, the virus he had just plugged in was automatically activated. It would not only reformat the hard drive, erasing all data, but it would look for cloud storage services and permanently delete these as well.

After 10 seconds, he pocketed the USB key and let the program do its thing. He was about to leave when Ned entered the office after having done his own quick investigation.

“Fry was heading the project and it seems like he hadn’t told anyone of his results.”

Spicer took the information in. “Was he married?”

“Divorced. He lived alone now, had for several years.”

“Okay,” Spicer said, rolling up the newspaper. “We clean his house before the cops get there.”

They left office.