Designated Target - Chapter 2

It was a sign that something big was going on when Solomon’s secretary waved Taylor through as soon as he walked into the outer office. While he wasn’t the kind of Washington bureaucrat to make visitors wait to show how powerful he was, Solomon was the Director of the FBI, which meant things were constantly coming up that had to be dealt with right away. Taylor couldn’t remember the last time he’d been able to go right in without at least waiting a few minutes.

Joe Solomon’s office was on the top corner of the Hoover building with windows stretching across two of the walls. Again, he broke the Washington mold by not lavishly decorating the office with expensive furniture and decorations. The soldier in Taylor approved of its functional use, with files and law books opened up on the desk where Solomon was busy scribbling down notes of something.

He and Taylor had their clashes over the years, and Taylor would never admit it if asked directly, but he grudgingly admitted that for a bureaucrat, Solomon was pretty good.

“That was fast,” Joe said, looking up from the note he was writing.

“I was over at main justice.”

“Something important?” Solomon asked, clearly trying to think what Taylor would have been working on that would have taken him over the main DOJ offices.

While Taylor was pretty sure Solomon had come to terms with Taylor working for the Bureau, and even found him useful, he knew the director was very hesitant about Taylor ever interacting with anyone else from the justice department, or any other part of the federal government.

Not that Taylor blamed him. He knew he didn’t fit into the Washington atmosphere, where everything was more about pulling in as much personal power as possible and image was everything. It was the exact sort of place that created people like Edward Packer, the weaselly, and now very much dead, ex-campaign strategist turned defense contractor, and Taylor would gladly be shunned by every one of them.

“No. I went with that kid I pulled out of Somalia for his final meeting about possible charges. I was moral support and didn’t say a thing.”

“I’d heard they were going to close the case,” Solomon said, pointing at one of the chairs across from his desk.

Again, Taylor wasn’t surprised by that. One of the reasons Taylor was willing to overlook Solomon being a desk jokey was because he was at least useful, in that he usually knew what was happening in Washington circles. It had come in handy more than once.

“What’s up?” Taylor asked, sitting down.

“We have a situation in New Jersey. Have you heard anything about the Torrance and Dominic Amato cases?”

“Vaguely. They’re the brothers in charge of some crime family, right? Their case is supposed to start soon?”

“‘Supposed to’ being the key phrase. The New Jersey office has been building a case against them for years, but it’s been tough. They both came up post-Gotti, and the mob busting in the nineties, so they were very careful never to have been on tape or anywhere near a crime. We finally caught a break six months ago when one of their top lieutenants flipped to keep his kid, who’d been trying to get into the family business over his old man’s wishes, from going to jail. He was able to connect enough dots and place the Amato brothers in enough rooms to get a grand jury to hand down indictments. Although we managed to keep Bartolini under wraps for months, two days ago he was shot while sitting in a hotel being watched over by two US Marshals. From what I’ve been told, Bartolini wasn’t exposed and the shot was one in a million.”

“So the case is screwed?”

“It’s hurt, but we’re not out yet. One of the first people Bartolini got for us was the Amatos’ money guy. A little weasel named Sam Finney. He’s not as good as Bartolini, since he can’t put the brothers in rooms where crimes were being discussed, but he knows enough about their finances that we should be able to get a conviction. The worry, of course, is that he’ll never make it into a courtroom.”

“You know I’m not the guy for this, right? I’m not a babysitter and I don’t know shit about personal protection.”

“First of all, we know that’s not true. Look what you did for the President before the election.”

“That was different. I was hunting the guy tracking her. I’m assuming the local office already has people looking for the shooter, and you’re not the guy to pull them off the case and hand it over to me. Hell, I’ve asked you to do exactly that before, and you balked.”

“Normally, you’d be right, but this is different. There is no way the Amato family or their shooter should have been able to find Bartolini. The problem is, the Amatos have been able to get some pretty high-placed people in their pockets before. Judges, cops, even agents out of both the New Jersey and Manhattan offices. For them to get to Bartolini, someone had to talk. We moved him every three days, picking the spot at random to shortly beforehand to keep it from being known, and no one outside of the room they were all staying in knew which room they were in. We didn’t switch shifts and we didn’t have anything come in and out of the room. Frankly, I can’t trust anyone up there right now, because I don’t know where the leak is. It could be with the locals, with our people, or hell, even with the Marshals. I need someone I know one-hundred percent I can trust. You might be a lot of things, but you’re not in anyone’s pocket.”

“And this case has already hit the papers, so if you drop the ball, you’re going to look bad on prime time news.”

“I know that’s what you think of all of us, Taylor, but it’s not about that. The Amato’s are bad people. They have done some heinous shit over the last fifteen years that equals some of the worst cartels, as far as brutality goes, and the brothers are at the front of that. Until they came to power, the family was pretty minor and wasn’t really even on our radar. Since then, however, they have been absorbing or wiping out every other criminal element in their way as they’ve expanded, consolidating all of it in their hands. These guys are bad, and I want them stopped.”

“So you want me to just go and sit on this guy until after the trial?”

“No, but mostly because I know you and I know you don’t have the patience for that. Yes, I want you to make sure Finney makes it to trial, but I’m not going to stop you going after the shooter if you want, as long as you can guarantee Finney’s safety. You’ll see it when you get down there, but I’m telling you that the shot on Bartolini was one in a million, so this guy is damn good, and I’d like to have them off the streets if at all possible.”

Unlike other agents, who actually worked for the Bureau and cared about their careers, Taylor had said no to assignments before when he felt like they weren’t in his area. He’s spent too much time as a square peg being hammered into a round hole while he was in the military, to let the FBI bully him into taking assignments he was destined to fail, especially without Whitaker by his side. He had to hand it to Solomon. He’d cleverly expanded what would have just been a protection job into something Taylor would be interested in chasing, just to make sure Taylor didn’t try and buck the assignment.

“All right,” Taylor said, standing up and moving around behind the chair. “I’ll take care of it I guess.”

***

“What did Joe want?” Whitaker asked the second Taylor walked through their front door.

She was standing on the other side of the door and he’d almost walked right into her, and would have if he hadn’t twisted aside at the last second, which was a feat unto itself, considering how far along she was. Whitaker, stubborn as ever, didn’t even budge.

“What?” Taylor asked.

He’d been so busy trying not to smash into her that he hadn’t actually heard what she said.

“I said, what did Joe want?”

“How did you …?” Taylor started to ask, and then stopped.

Of course, she’d have people on the top floor telling her everything that was going on. Whitaker was a control freak on her best days, and that had kicked into overdrive ever since she’d hit the third trimester. One of the things that made her Solomon’s right-hand woman had been her ability to navigate the FBI, maintaining good relationships with both the front-line troops and the bureaucrats at the top. She’d always had her finger on the pulse of the agency and made sure she stayed two steps ahead of her boss, and she’d made it clear she wasn’t going to let a little thing like having a baby slow her down.

She might have been ordered to stay out of the building and on bed rest, but she clearly hadn’t severed any of those connections. It was a testament to the paranoia Solomon must have felt that he both voluntarily called in Taylor and Whitaker hadn’t heard about it. It also explained why she sounded so annoyed. That kind of blind spot must be driving her insane.

“He has a job for me.”

“For you? By yourself?” She asked, rightfully surprised.

It was one thing to utilize Taylor’s talents while he had Whitaker at his side, ostensibly keeping him in check. It was something else to have Taylor involved without that kind of control.

Taylor wasn’t surprised by her indication and he agreed with her. Solomon offering him a solo assignment was unusual. Of course, his agreeing with her didn’t mean he wouldn’t use this as an opportunity to mess with her a little.

“I’m sorry, Princess, but he said this is a really sensitive assignment and I’m not supposed to talk to anyone about it.”

The expression on her face was enough to melt steel as she stepped right into him, her distended belly pushing him back into the wall as she stuck a finger in his face.

“Unless you want to wake up in the middle of the night missing some pieces, I suggest you quit screwing around and tell me what’s going on.”

Taylor laughed, shaking his head. She would have been a lot more intimidating if her soft belly hadn’t bumped into him every time she punctuated a word. Taking the hand with the pointed finger in his hand, Taylor leaned forward and kissed her head.

“I’m just messing with you. You know you’re cute when you’re annoyed.”

“One day …” she started to say.

“… I’m going to regret messing with you. Yes, I know. I regret it already.”

“Fine. Just as long as you know you’re playing with fire. So what the hell is going on? No one could tell me anything.”

“The witness in the case against the Amato brothers was killed a couple of days ago.”

“What?” Whitaker asked, stopping and looking up at him. “They just got the grand jury back on them and they had Bartolini completely locked down. How the hell did they get to him?”

Taylor wasn’t surprised she was up on the case. For something this big, she would of course have had some hand in working on it, even if she couldn’t be out in the field.

“That’s why Solomon asked me to go to New Jersey. He’s worried there might be a leak, either in the Bureau or with the Marshals, and wants someone to make sure their other witness makes it to trial.”

“Okay, I can get that, but you aren’t really built for protective details.”

“True, but he also wants me to look for the hitter. Apparently, the guy made a nearly impossible shot and they haven’t been able to find a trace of him afterward. If there is someone that good out there, it’ll be hard to keep Finney safe, no matter how trustworthy the people watching him are.”

“How, exactly, are you planning on watching Finney and tracking down the shooter simultaneously?”

“I haven’t worked that part out yet. I want to look at the crime scene first and see what we’re working with.”

“What does that have to do with protecting a witness?”

“Normally it wouldn’t, but I’ve looked at the files. Like you said, they went out of their way to keep him locked down and the hitter found them anyway. Even if I go completely off the grid, if they have someone on the inside, it’ll be hard to rely on secrecy to keep him safe. On top of that, the shot the hitter took was one in a thousand, according to Joe. If that’s true, just doing the same thing they did with Bartolini isn’t going to keep this guy safe until they get to trial. The best way to keep this guy safe is to smoke out whoever they have on the inside and track down the person who killed Bartolini.”

“So you’re going to have someone else watch Finney?”

“That was my thought. Find someone unconnected to law enforcement but with the training to get the job done and put them somewhere no one else knows about, even if the hitter finds out I’ve been assigned to protect Finney, they won’t be able to find him through me, and I’m not going to talk. If the hitter tries to follow me, they’ll only find me hunting them, which might distract them anyway.”

“You’re good at finding people, but you don’t know shit about working a crime scene, especially if you don’t have me to help you. Besides, if you’re tracking a hitman, I’d feel more comfortable if you had backup.”

“Who’d you have in mind?” Taylor asked, apprehensively.

He didn’t have anything specific against most of the agents at the FBI, but he found them, in general, to be too focused on the politics of being an agent to actually be good at their job. That is one of the things he appreciated about Whitaker. She was able, when needed, to do things that had to be done. Even with that, he’d found her sometimes too rigid in her thinking. They’d managed to make their partnership work, but Taylor doubted he could be effective with someone else, especially if they were one of the many politically connected agents who cared more about rising through the ranks and making a name for themselves instead of actually getting the job done.

“Don’t give me that look,” she said, correctly interpreting his facial expression. “I know how you feel about most of us and I wouldn’t saddle you with someone you couldn’t work with. I was thinking about Trevor Robles.”

Taylor stopped, considering. After Whitaker, Trevor Robles was the only other person at the FBI he had much regard for. Robles had actually been with the US Marshals years ago when Taylor had first run into him after getting swept up in a plot to murder a witness against Russian Mobsters. After the events in Miami, Robles had moved over to the FBI and had even done a few favors for Taylor since, including backing down from an investigation into his adopted daughter and the death of a defense contractor involved in selling US secrets several months ago.

Favors aside, Robles was a pretty good agent and had the flexibility that Taylor needed in a partner.

“Robles might work,” he said.

“Yeah, I thought you’d say that. You go get packed for your trip to New Jersey. I’ll call Joe and get Robles transferred over to this case. What about the witness?”

“He’s inside the local FBI offices at the moment sleeping on a couch. He’ll be safe for a few days. I have a few names I’m considering, but I want to see the scene before deciding who to ask.”

“Just don’t wait too long. He might be safe there for a few days, but if they’ve got someone inside the Bureau feeding them information, it won’t be hard for them to figure out who you passed Finney to.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Taylor said, leading her over to the big padded chair she liked to sit in when her back was hurting.

Helping her down so she didn’t have to strain her back, he leaned over and kissed her head.

“It won’t be the same investigating a case without you,” he said softly into her hair as he hugged her head into his chest.

“Don’t get used to it,” she said, nuzzling into him. “After I’m on maternity and we find a good nanny to watch the baby, I’m going to be back out there with you.”

“We’ll talk about it,” he said.

He actually looked forward to both the baby and getting Whitaker back by his side every day, but they hadn’t actually addressed what life was going to look like after the baby came. True, they already had a kid, but Kara had already been a teenager when she came to live with them, and she was more worldly than most seasoned veterans Taylor had known, let alone for a teenager. A baby was going to be a new experience and both of them had been avoiding discussing what that was going to do to their lives.

Trenton, New Jersey

Whitaker was true to her word and Robles was already waiting for him when Taylor got back to the Hoover building to arrange for plane tickets and a car when they got to New Jersey.

“I was surprised to hear you’d asked for me to back you up on this,” Robles said when Taylor walked into the small office he normally shared with Whitaker.

“It was Whitaker’s idea. She thought I needed a babysitter if I was going to work an actual case.”

“I thought as much,” Robles said, and Taylor could hear the subtext in the brief sentence.

“I’m not going to give you a hard time. She’s right, if the Amato family has someone feeding them information, it’ll be good to have someone who knows procedure, to see if anything was missed. Besides, you’re not so bad.”

“High praise,” Robles said with a smirk. “I just wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be any problems after that thing over the summer.”

“Should there be?” Taylor asked, eyeing Robles.

Although he’d agreed to drop any investigation into Kara, there was always a chance he could bring it back up if he wanted to. Robles was generally a straight shooter and wasn’t as by-the-book as Whitaker was, so Taylor hadn’t been particularly worried about it. Still, this was the first chance they’d had to spend any time together since it happened and both men knew it had to be addressed or there’d be an underlying tension that might cause other issues.

“Not from me.”

“Good,” Taylor said and reached into the drawer of his desk, pulling out a large folder packed with documents. “Here’s what I’ve got on the family, the witnesses, and what little they’d turned up at the crime scene. We’ll be checking that out first, before we figure out what to do with the remaining witness.”

“Whitaker said you wanted to go after the shooter?”

“Yeah. If they’re as good as everyone is saying, it’s the only sure-fire way to ensure they don’t get past us.”

“And you aren’t one for just babysitting a witness.”

“There’s that too. You okay with that.”

“As long as you’ve got a good plan for keeping this guy alive while we play cat and mouse with the shooter, sure.”

“I have some thoughts, but like I said, I want to see the crime scene first.”

Most of the trip to New Jersey was spent in silence as Robles went over the case files, with only the occasional question for Taylor, who didn’t really have any answers, since, with the exception of a few conversations with Whitaker and Joe Solomon, he was only going off the same case files at the moment.

The first thing Taylor noted when they pulled into the motel parking lot was how out of the way it was. It was on the outskirts of a suburb far from the field offices or any of the departments involved, picking a location that was neither the cheapest around nor something more lavish. They’d also picked a spot with limited other buildings nearby, probably to try and cut down on the chances of a shooter getting an advantage on them.

The report Taylor had seen said that the shooter had fired from a higher angle, suggesting they’d been in a nearby building, but seeing the way the buildings were laid out explained why everyone thought the shooter was extremely skilled.

The nearest building that could overlook the motel and offer a clear view around the trees ringing the parking lot was almost a mile away, which would put it in the top twenty or so shots for distance in the world. Taylor was a good shot himself, but he would have been hard-pressed to make a shot at that distance. Calculating for things like bullet drop, minute of angle, wind speeds, and the like at that range would have been challenging all on its own. Long-distance shooting like that was a specialty and went far beyond just ‘being a good shot.’

Although the shooting itself happened days ago, the local field office was clearly taking this seriously, since they still had a state patrol car stationed in front of the motel room with yellow police tape stretched across it. Taylor hadn’t been to a lot of crime scenes, at least not compared to Robles and Whitaker, but he’d been to enough to know they normally just locked the rooms up and put a sticker between the door and the door frame if they were still investigating a scene. He couldn’t remember ever being to a crime scene days after the actual event and seeing a patrol car still stationed out front.

The room itself was still more or less how it had been left just after the shooting. A brownish stain still marked the wall by the bed farthest from the front door along with a matching brown patch where Bartolini had bled out into the carpet. The crime scene had actually been fairly well maintained, compared to other scenes Taylor had walked into. From the autopsy report Taylor saw, it would have been clear to both agents that Bartolini was dead the second he hit the floor, what with the giant hole in his head, so they hadn’t needed to bring in paramedics to try and save him, which was where a lot of crime scenes were destroyed.

They’d probably also realized what a train wreck the whole thing was going to become, what with a witness dying in custody, so they’d been careful to keep from disturbing anything. Taylor pulled out the case file and compared some of the early pictures the agents had taken, just to be sure, and everything still seemed in the same place.

“At least the scene is in good shape,” Robles said, echoing Taylor’s thoughts.

“Yeah. Shit, did you see that?” Taylor said, pointing at the window.

“The window? Yeah, it looks just like the picture.”

“I mean the curtain. It was in the picture, but actually seeing it, after seeing the layout outside … that was one hell of a shot.”

“You’re going to have to walk me through it,” Robles said.

Robles was a lifelong cop and hadn’t ever served in the military, so it wasn’t surprising he hadn’t seen something like this before. While people being shot by a rifle from a distance wasn’t all that uncommon, shots like this rarely happened outside of the military, and even then usually in shooting competitions.

“Look at the angle of the bullet impact and where Bartolini was sitting on the bed. The bullet went clean through, so you can see the hole in the wall. That’s a pretty steep angle, both the height and how oblique it was. If you look back outside, there’s really only one building that the shooter could have been in, and that’s a hell of a long shot. Look at the curtains, there isn’t any hole and only some tearing on the edge of the one on the right. There’s barely a gap between them and the shooter went right through them. That’s world-class shooting.”

“Not surprising the Amato’s would spring for someone good,” Robles said, still not sounding properly impressed.

“I don’t think you’re getting me. When I say world-class, I mean there are maybe a dozen or so shooters in the world who could make that shot. The distance is pretty far, but the angle and limited view of the target would have been the real challenge. On top of that, the report said the agents were sitting at that table, in between the window and Bartolini, and it went right past them. Neither got touched. It’d be like threading a needle on a dartboard. It’s damned impressive.”

“But why avoid hitting the agents? It’s not like someone like this would care if they hit law enforcement.”

“I think that was more to ensure the kill rather than trying to keep from hurting the agents. Punching through one target to get another is something that’s possible up close, but at that range, the bullet would have lost enough velocity that hitting a bone could knock it enough to keep it from being a kill shot. The shooter had to get him on the first shot, since it would be impossible, or at least really hard, to reacquire him for a second shot.”

“That makes sense, but why go to that trouble anyway. If they were able to track him down here, they could have surveilled him and found that there was no backup, since they were trying to rely on a low profile to protect him, more than anything else. They could have rolled up a couple of cars of guys with automatic weapons and shredded the place. It’s not exactly outside the mobs’ MO.”

“True, which is why I’m thinking this is a contractor. You have more experience with these kinds of people than I do, but pros like this would want to keep from being caught on camera, and there aren’t freeway exits nearby to get a quick escape. Without an easy escape, the best choice would be a few blocks away, outside of where the cops would start looking once they got the word, probably somewhere without a lot of cameras.”

“But why go with a pro at all if they know where he is.”

“Maybe the shooter was the one who found him. We’re assuming the mob has someone inside one of the local departments, and that’s how they found them, but it’s possible the shooter tracked the agents or found a way to track him.”

“You’re not suggesting someone in the Bureau is dirty, are you?”

“I’m not discounting it, but the Amatos are a small-time outfit. Yes, they’ve done some heinous shit, but they’re a drop in the bucket compared to their brethren across the river. Do they have the weight to start turning agents?”

“Okay,” Robles said.

Robles wasn’t exactly a company man, but he was the kind of lifetime law enforcement that had a hard time seeing anyone wearing a badge being dirty, regardless of what he’d already seen in the past. His relief seemed more that Taylor wasn’t actually accusing someone in the FBI, rather than Taylor saying it was unlikely.

“So the question is, how did they track Bartolini, if it wasn’t someone on the inside?”

“That’s the real question,” Taylor said, still slowly walking the room. “It’s also why I’ve been thinking the best way to keep Finney safe is to find the shooter, since beyond being a good shot, they’re pretty good at tracking their targets.”

“Makes sense, but how do we go about protecting Finney and finding the shooter? We can’t exactly bring him along with us and he’s the real goal. If something happens to him while we’re out hunting the shooter, Solomon’s going to have our asses. Hell, if he hears you’ve passed the protection detail off to someone else, he might have them anyway.”

“I don’t normally bother myself too much with what Joe wants. As long as I deliver, I find he can talk himself into being okay with how I did it.”

“I guess,” Robles said, not sounding convinced. “So how do we go about keeping him protected?”

“I have some thoughts, but I want to see the US Attorney who managed this thing first. I want to make sure it wasn’t a local problem or the Amato’s getting someone on the inside before I make a decision. Past that, the whole reason Joe wanted me in this in the first place was because I’m as much of an outsider as they’d be able to get. As long as I get someone who’s reliable and in no way able to be connected back to this, we should be okay, as long as we don’t screw up.”

“I wish I had your confidence in that.”

Taylor just shrugged and continued walking the crime scene. He was pretty sure he’d already seen what he needed to, but he wanted both he and Robles to give it a few more passes before they left, just to be sure.