No Mercy by John Gilstrap Page B

hands trembling from the sudden shot of adrenaline, she logged out of ICIS and pulled up the link for a super-encrypted telephone site. She donned her headset as her fingers flew across the keyboard to pull up Jonathan's secure satellite phone.

    The Hummer was a ridiculous waste of natural resources, Jonathan knew, but given the specific demands of his business and his addiction to high-tech toys, it was the only vehicle that would suffice. In addition to the armored doors and windows, he'd also equipped it with the latest in communication technology. He'd even thought to include a cipher-activated vault below the center console, in which he kept a supply of cash in case of emergencies. Right now, the vault held $25,000 in hundred-dollar bills. Boxers called it the Batmobile.
    The hard-lined telephone mounted on the dash was an encrypted satellite phone that allowed him to freely discuss anything with anyone who had similar technology on the other end. Predictably, Boxers called it the Batphone.
    And it was ringing.
    A wrong number was impossible, but Jonathan nonetheless answered it on speakerphone with a noncommittal, "Yes."
    "Digger, it's Venice. We've got a problem."
    He waited for it.
    "The Hugheses are a family of murderers."

    As she drove toward Muncie, Gail Bonneville wasn't sure what she expected to glean from the scene of the quadruple murder there, but when so many people were dead, and the single name of Hughes was tied to their murders, it was a lead that needed following.
    This latest twist was a stunner. What had seemed so clearly to be an altruistic act of bravery on the part of her shooter in Samson suddenly looked like something else entirely. Three people murdered in the rescue of the son of murderers. What could that possibly mean? Every one of the conclusions she'd prematurely drawn to this point was now in question.
    The trill of her cell phone annoyed her. One of the good things about long drives was the time it afforded for quiet thought. The caller ID showed her it was her office, but that somehow only heightened her sense of annoyance.
    "Bonneville."
    "Collier." Jesse matched her tone exactly, making her smile. "You in the mood for entertaining news?"
    "I'd prefer 'good' to 'entertaining,'" she said, "but I'll take whatever you've got."
    "When were tracking down all that flight information a while ago, I made some good contacts," Jesse explained. "One of them just called to tell me that the Perseus Foods jet has filed a flight plan for a return trip to Indianapolis."

Chapter Twenty-three

    The murder scene on Detweiler Avenue in Muncie was as gruesome as faux FBI Agent Jonathan Grave had ever seen. The bodies were gone--shipped off to the morgue hours ago to be split open and rummaged through--leaving behind the dried pools, smears, and spatters of gore that were somehow more awful by themselves than they would have been with the corpses still presenters' affections. At about 2,300 square feet on two levels, it was exactly the kind of house that middle-class Americans think of when they think suburbia. Outside, the place was likewise well kept, even if the grass was a little long--the fact that prompted a neighbor to realize that something might be wrong in the first place. In the eighteen hours since that poor Samaritan had peeked in the window and called the police, thousands of footsteps by dozens of police officers and emergency workers had destroyed the lawn, and the dozens of feet of crime scene tape had ruined the innocence.
    Stan Hastings of the Muncie Police Department was lead detective on the case. Five-eleven and trim, with signs of gray in what was left of his elaborate comb-over, he looked to be about forty-five, and seemed none too pleased to be walking through the scene yet again. He'd asked the usual jurisdictional questions when Jonathan arrived with his FBI credentials, but was easily convinced that he was investigating a link between the Caldwells and the theft of classified