Under the Color of Law Read online

"Jump over to the second Applewhite terrell phone transcript. Terrell asks or says something. Applewhite replies that 'the itinerary is finalized." Another statement from Terrell. Applewhite replies that someone is more resourceful than originally thought, and that a regrettable but not damaging connection has been made. Applewhite listens and then asks, "Take no action' followed by the phrase "And Agent Perry?" Andy looked hard at his old friend and placed his palm on the papers.

  "This is all about you becoming a target, Kevin. Are you sure you want to keep pushing this?"

  "For now, it's just talk, Andy," Kerney said, thinking that the last thing he wanted, with a baby on the way, was to put himself at risk. "Let's keep watching and listening before we overreact."

  Kerney smiled reassuringly at Andy, who shook his head in response.

  "Moving on," Kerney said. "Clarence Terrell may be supplying the intelligence community with a new toy. Let me tell you about SWAMI."

  ***

  Charlie Perry's in-flight reading consisted of a briefing document on Enrique De Leon Drugs were his bread and butter, but De Leon dabbled in the theft of historical artifacts and fine art. Kerney had spoiled two of De Leon heists: a cache of mint-condition nineteenth century military equipment discovered in a secret Apache cave at White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico, and millions of dollars in twentieth-century art taken from the New Mexico governor's suite. De Leon attempt to have Kerney whacked had failed, but he'd succeeded in eliminating a number of competitors, and was now jefe numero uno in northern Mexico.

  Applewhite and Perry disembarked at the El Paso Airport. A special operative from the El Paso Drug Interdiction Intelligence Center logged their arrival and handed the information off to an army criminal investigator. Perry drove Applewhite across the bridge into Juarez. A U. S. Customs agent pulled the videotape of the crossing, made a copy, and sent it by courier to an intelligence officer at nearby Fort Bliss.

  On a dirty, gaudy, crowded Juarez street a DEA undercover agent wheeled his taxi three cars back behind Perry's car and reported the start of his surveillance to a special army intelligence drug-interdiction unit at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

  With Applewhite at his side Perry rang the doorbell at an opulent house on a tree-lined street close to the Juarez mayor's mansion. The DEA taxi driver broke off contact and ended his surveillance as a CIA deep-cover agent snapped front-step photos of Perry and Applewhite from a slow-moving car passing by. The undeveloped film would be flown to Headquarters, Air Intelligence Agency, at Kelly Air Force Base in Texas.

  A stocky, balding Mexican Army general wearing civilian clothes and a wire opened the front door. The feed went to an upstairs room, where a U. S. State Department counterintelligence operative manned a remote receiver. Wordlessly, the general ushered the two agents into a mahogany-paneled library and closed the door.

  "Senor De Leon has asked me to cover the preliminaries for him," the general said.

  "What preliminaries?" Charlie Perry asked, casting a glance at Applewhite, who merely shrugged.

  "No De Leon no meeting." He turned on his heel to leave.

  "Let's hear the general out," Applewhite said.

  Perry swung around, gave Applewhite a harsh look, and nodded abruptly. The general continued.

  "Senor De Leon wishes me to inform you that you will be paid five hundred thousand dollars for the elimination of Kevin Kerney, half today and half upon completion of your assignment."

  "Where's De Leon?" Perry snapped.

  "The task must be done in such a way as not to draw attention to Senor De Leon. While he has full confidence in your discretion and abilities, if at the end of your assignment he believes otherwise, he will not release the balance due you."

  "Forget it," Perry said.

  "This isn't going to work, General," Applewhite said, "unless we include De Leon in on the proceedings."

  "If you agree to these terms, the ground rules for meeting with De Leon are as follows: You will be searched by my aide for weapons and listening devices. He will then drive you to a place outside the city. There you will finalize your agreement with Senor De Leon in person and receive your first payment."

  "Why all the hoops?" Perry asked.

  "Senor De Leon is a cautious man who wishes to make sure that I am thoroughly embedded in the transaction. Since you are unknown to him personally, and he is accepting you on the basis of my recommendation, my complicity in the operation is required."

  "Let's get on with it," Perry said.

  ***

  Applewhite sat up front with the general's aide. They rolled south past the Juarez Airport, through a couple of ugly shanty towns, and into the desert--a vast, dusty, windblown expanse that made Charlie yearn for the Beltway, traffic congestion, and mobs of people.

  On a dirt road they pulled up next to a black Lincoln limo. A driver got out and opened the rear door. The general's aide got out and stood at attention. De Leon emerged from the backseat. Perry half expected the young officer to salute.

  The jefe's brown curly hair stayed put in the wind. The lips below his narrow nose carried a smirk that widened as Applewhite stepped out of the car.

  "I want particulars of how you plan to proceed," De Leon said to Perry, dismissing Applewhite with a look.

  Applewhite shot him in the face, wheeled, pumped two quick rounds into the driver, and delivered a coup de grace to the back of De Leon head.

  "Jesus fucking Christ," Perry said.

  The aide stepped to the Lincoln, fetched a suitcase, and took the semiautomatic from Applewhite's outstretched hand.

  "We must leave now," the young officer said.

  "Jesus fucking Christ," Perry moaned.

  "Get in the car, Charlie," Applewhite said, leading Perry to the aide's vehicle, "and I'll bring you up to speed."

  She got in the backseat with him. Perry leaned his head back and closed his eyes, his heart thumping in his chest. The car made a U-turn and accelerated.

  "Here's the way it plays," Applewhite said.

  "By midnight some very factual reports from a variety of reliable intelligence sources will be sanitized, assembled, and analyzed at the Department of Defense. Those reports will prove beyond a doubt that you and you alone entered into a contract with De Leon to assassinate Kevin Kerney, and that you murdered De Leon to ensure his silence after accepting a quarter-million-dollar advance to do the job, which by the way will be deposited shortly in an offshore account you recently opened. Should you ever decide to purge your guts to the Bureau about what really happened, both the general and his aide will be called upon to give statements corroborating what I've just told you. I guarantee that should you decide to try to disprove these accusations, you'll spend the rest of your life in a federal prison."

  "Why kill De Leon?" Perry asked, his eyes still shut.

  "Because the opportunity might not have presented itself again, and it makes some important people on both sides of the border very happy."

  "Kerney's next, isn't he? No matter what he does or doesn't know."

  Applewhite patted Charlie's knee. It made him recoil and open his eyes. "Don't concern yourself about that."

  "When do you ice me?"

  "Not to worry, Charlie. You get to go back to the Beltway after all. There's a nice desk job waiting for you at the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Your new bosses are looking forward to working with you."

  Charlie didn't believe her. "You're a lying bitch."

  Applewhite jammed a thumb into a pressure point on Perry's neck and his chin hit his chest. She punched a syringe through Perry's trousers into his thigh and emptied the contents. The fast acting drug would keep him knocked out for hours.

  The aide handed her the semiautomatic. She put on plastic gloves, ejected the magazine, emptied the clip, cleaned everything with a rag, and pressed Charlie's fingers against the cold metal surfaces, including the unspent rounds. She bagged the evidence and tossed it on the front seat next to the briefcase that held De Leon quarter-million-do
llar up-front payment.

  The car swung through a military gate at the Juarez Airport and drove into a Mexican Air Force hangar, where the general waited. Two uniformed soldiers pulled Perry from the car, carried him to a small fixed-wing airplane, and pushed his rag-doll body inside. The aide got out and handed the briefcase to his general. The general hefted it to gauge the weight of its contents and smiled at Applewhite.

  Applewhite stared him down until the smile vanished. She handed the aide a slip of paper. "These are the clearance codes the pilot will need to enter restricted airspace and land at White Sands Missile Range."

  In an hour Perry would be back in the States under guard in a safe location at a high-security testing facility. The aide nodded and stepped off to the ready room to find the pilot.

  "You are not happy with the success of your mission, senora?" the general asked, oozing false charm.

  "I've got a message for you from Langley," Applewhite said. "The quarter million dollars in that briefcase better be the last drug money you ever take. If you sell your services to the jefe who steps in to take De Leon place the CIA will kill you, your family, and your aged mother. Where's my car and driver?"

  The general's eyes turned pinpoint murderous. "Behind the hangar."

  ***

  From a pay phone at the El Paso Airport, Ingram booked a room at a bed-and-breakfast in Charlie Perry's name. He used the credit card number from Perry's Santa Fe hotel bill to guarantee the reservation and said he was sending his luggage over by taxi because he had meetings that would keep him from checking in until very late.

  The woman said they locked the front door at seven. She gave him a room number and told him she'd leave a guest key under a chair cushion on the front porch.

  Outside the terminal Ingram hailed a cab, paid the driver in advance to deliver the bags to the B & B, added a nice tip, and went looking for the bar. He had hours to kill before he needed to get to the B & B, make the room look slept in, pick up Charlie's luggage, and leave a cash payment for the room on the dresser. He ordered a single malt. The bar TV showed a taped Hawaiian triathlon.

  The drink came and Ingram raised the glass in a mock toast to Charlie Perry. Deluded by feelings of self-importance, blinded by a faith that the Bureau could do no wrong, eager to think he'd been tapped for a fast-track promotion assignment, Charlie was without a doubt the perfect patsy. What a fall Perry was about to take. Tim slugged down the whiskey and thought he'd been spending too much time drinking over the past six months.

  ***

  City Manager Demora, the rah-rah proponent of open-door management, made Kerney sit outside his closed office door and wait well past normal office hours.

  Kerney used the time to review the discussion notes he'd taken after briefing Andy, Detective Sloan, and Lieutenant Molina about SWAMI.

  Question: What covert information-gathering need would SWAMI serve? From what Kerney had read about Carnivore, the FBI Internet wiretap

  system, its capacity was limited to gathering on-line messages. Did Swami duplicate or go beyond Carnivore's capacity to acquire information?

  Question: Was the government using Trade Venture, APT Performa, and Touch Link as corporate shields? If so, why was it important for SWAMI not to be a bona-fide intelligence tool?

  Question: What did money have to do with it? The Mitchell Terrell murders occurred after the priest had started looking into the trade mission's economic agenda, drug-money laundering, and financial crimes.

  Question: What, if any, was Ambassador Terrell's role in SWAMI?

  * * *

  Kerney put his notes away. Bobby Sloan believed SWAMI might well be the mother of all computer-based covert technological snooping devices.

  It was what computer geeks called a packet sniffer, which sounded innocuous, but the implications gave Kerney the shivers. If Sloan was right, they were truly on the verge of a big-brother world. Had Carnivore opened the door on a digital world where private information about citizens would be routinely collected, whether they were suspects in a crime or not?

  Kerney looked up. An unsmiling Demora stood in his open doorway. Kerney stepped inside and sat down. A new plaque pronouncing Demora a valued member of another civic organization had been added to the wall.

  Face time came cheap in Santa Fe.

  Demora eased into his desk chair and quickly read Kerney out, using all the politically correct buzzwords and catch phrases of the enabling, empowering administrator. But it boiled down to this: He wanted his chief to be available when he called; he wanted his chief full-time at police headquarters running the department; he wanted closure on the Herrera reassignment, which meant Kerney was to meet with Officer Herrera's lawyer ASAP; he wanted weekly updates on Larry Otero's performance as deputy chief; he wanted to be kept fully informed, not blindsided by phone calls from unnamed sources complaining about things.

  Kerney kept his cool by busily scribbling notes. He stopped and said, "How have you been blindsided, Bill?"

  Demora pursed his lips, sat up straight in his chair, and adjusted the drape of his sport coat.

  "I'll give you an example: I've been told you're playing favorites, that you personally selected two senior officers for a special training seminar at the law-enforcement academy without going through the proper departmental channels. That kind of behavior doesn't engender confidence in your management style."

  "I see. Anything else?"

  Demora rocked back in his chair and forced a smile.

  "Actually, there is. Over the past several days persistent comments have been made to me about your continuing probe into the successfully concluded FBI investigation of Mrs. Terrell's murder. It seems to me your time could be much better spent ensuring that your detectives bring Father Mitchell's murderer to justice. If I were you, that would be my first priority."

  Kerney felt screwed. If the rumor mill had fed Demora information about his end run around the Bureau, that meant his finesse moves had surely failed. He was more vulnerable than he'd realized.

  "Who's telling you this?" he asked.

  Demora put his hands up to block the question.

  "That's not the issue. I told you when you came on board as chief that I make myself available to any and every city employee as well as all the members of this community. My policy works because employees understand that they can speak freely without fear of reprisal, and citizens know their grievances and concerns will receive a fair and quick hearing."

  "Tell me, are those voices of concern from inside or outside the department?" Kerney asked, trying to keep sarcasm out of his voice.

  "Don't turn this into a witch hunt, Chief Kerney."

  "That's not my style."

  "Very well. To this point the concerns are internal." Demora's expression softened.

  "We're both in the early stages of sorting out our working relationship, Chief. All I'm suggesting here is that we don't let small matters turn into big problems. Both of us need to stay alert and keep each other fully in the loop. Open, free-flowing communication is the key to good management."

  Tired of Demora's control-freak bullshit, Kerney stood up.

  "I agree with you wholeheartedly, Bill. I'll get everything back on track."

  Demora flashed an approving smile.

  "That's what I wanted to hear."

  ***

  Lights were on in Kerney's bedroom and the only vehicle outside the cottage was his truck. He slid out of his unit at the front of the driveway, pulled his handgun, and used the shadows to approach the cottage. He went low under the living room window, flattened himself against the wall, and turned the knob to the front door. It was unlocked. He quietly pushed the door open, listened, and caught the sound of movement in the bedroom. He eased his way inside, weapon in the ready position, let his eyes adjust to the darkness, and did a visual sweep of the living room. Clear. He took a quick glance into the galley kitchen.

  Clear.

  He backed into the kitchen, where he had a direct lin
e of sight down the hallway leading to the closed bedroom door. He heard a hinge squeak on the bedroom closet door, followed by a thud as something hit the carpeted floor.

  The door opened and light washed down the hallway. Kerney said, "Freeze. Don't move, or I'll blow you away."

  Sara stood backlit in the doorway. "For God's sake, it's me, Kerney." She hit the hall light switch in time to see Kerney holstering his handgun.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "It's nice to see you too," Sara snapped.

  "Didn't you get my message? I asked you not to come this weekend."

  "That's exactly why I'm here. What is going on with you?"

  "I'm sorry." Kerney walked to Sara and took her hands. "I am glad you're here."

  She pulled away and gave Kerney a blistering look.

  "I don't believe you. Answer my question. Except for a short conversation and some confusing phone messages, I haven't heard from you all week."

  "I've been busy, that's all."

  "You've never been too busy not to call before. Are we going down the tubes, Kerney? Does the prospect of fatherhood have you scared?"

  Kerney shook his head. "That's not it at all."

  "Then talk to me."

  "Let's go out, get something to eat, and talk over dinner."

  "I'm not hungry. Talk to me now, Kerney. What's going on with you?"

  "Sara, its work. Just the job. It's not you, there isn't anything strange going on in my head, and it's not us. Believe me."

  "I don't need reassurances, I need conversation. Something's wrong and I want to know what it is."

  Kerney put a finger to his lips and pulled Sara into the bedroom. He showed her the telephone tap and the bug in the floor vent.

  "Can we talk about it over dinner?" he asked again. "I haven't eaten all day."

  Sara's distressed expression lightened. Her green eyes scanned Kerney's face.

  "If we must," she said. "But you'd better really talk to me, Kerney, otherwise I'm getting a hotel room for the night."

  ***

  They ordered a light meal at a restaurant favored by locals. Gray headed couples danced to bland renditions of soft-rock tunes played by a trio of old men wedged together on a small platform near the entrance. Muted televisions above the long bar entertained a row of blue-collar workers drinking their way deep into a Friday night. Area politicos sat at the back of the tiny dance floor, talking loudly, and waving to any constituents they knew by sight. Civil servants and their families out for a Friday-night dinner filled circular dining tables adjacent to the bar and ordered up the specials of the day.