Election Day (John Taylor #6) - Chapter 12

Taylor made calls on the drive back to D.C. He was familiar with Northbridge Services Group as they were a major defense contractor back when he was in. They specialized in basic equipment like body armor, harnesses, weapons mountings, and the like. Half the shit Taylor carried on him in the field had been manufactured or at least sub-contracted out by Northbridge.

Taylor hadn’t actually dealt with the company before, but it didn’t take long for him to figure out they weren’t going to be very helpful. A call to the company itself ended up with a short and very terse conversation with one of the company’s many lawyers who made it clear the only way Taylor would get any information was with a court order. Taylor planned on handing the information off to Whitaker, since she actually knew about getting subpoenas. He wasn’t particularly hopeful that would actually work, since even he could figure out they didn’t have enough to convince a judge.

That left back channels, which was fine by Taylor, since that was an area where he was more comfortable, anyway.

“Bryant Haushaltsgeräte Reparaturservice?” the person who answered said in badly accented German.

“Bryant, it’s Taylor.”

As with most of Taylor’s contacts, he and Dave Bryant had served together in the army. These days Bryant ran a small repair shop in Berlin, which was also a front for his other business as a private contractor specializing in government and military intelligence. Bryant had helped out Taylor briefly earlier in the year, albeit less than happily.

“What the hell do you want?”

“I need a favor.”

“Of course you do. You know, I’m not the Salvation Army, I don’t owe you any favors, and I’m not looking to pick up IOUs. I helped you out with your girl because we served together once, but you’ve used up that goodwill up. You need something, you can pay for it.”

Taylor grimaced. He’d been playing fast and loose with favors, especially over the last year during the business in Berlin. He knew that would only go so far, but he’d hoped he hadn’t reached that point yet. He’d also been playing off his connection with Caldwell, which didn’t sit well with him. While he was certain the Senator would back him up, especially since he was doing it to help her specifically, he was already picking up a lot of favors he’d have to pay off one day. Of course, he felt less bad about spending Caldwell’s money when it came to protecting her.

“How much?”

“It depends on what you need. I’m not saying I’ll do it, mind you. I work mostly through official channels these days, more or less. I’m not going to do something that burns me with my clients.”

Considering those clients were the more clandestine sides of governments and private security companies, Taylor assumed that covered a pretty large swath. Taylor didn’t think Northbridge would fall under that umbrella. Defense contractors tended to be pretty closed up, not wanting to do anything that might get them knocked off the government’s Rolodex.

“Several years ago Northbridge Services Group was doing R and D on a new EOD explosive and drafted some personnel. I’m trying to find out what specifically they were working on or someone that actively worked on the project I can talk to, without having to go through channels.”

There was a pause, presumably while Bryant worked out if getting that information would blow back on him, and how hard it would be for him to get what Taylor needed.

“Five K, plus any expenses.”

“I can do that, but I need it fast. Info on the explosive or a name, whichever you can get first, I’ll take.”

“I’ll start making some calls,” Bryant said, hanging up.

The next phone call Taylor wasn’t happy to make, but he knew it needed to be done, especially since he could see he would need more help from people like Bryant before this was all over.

After the normal hoops he had to go through, Caldwell answered.

“John, any news?”

“Not yet Senator. How’s Mary Jane?”

“Shaken but happy to have Kara here with her. This girl of yours is such a treasure.”

“Don’t I know it. I’ve been working on alternate ways of finding Hubbard, but it’s required some … less than official calls that definitely don’t fall inside what I could requisition from the Bureau.”

“John, you know I trust you completely. You’re out there trying to keep my daughter and me safe. I’ll cover any expense you need to find this man.”

“Thank you, Senator. I don’t normally like to ask about this kind of thing so I wanted to …”

“John, I will always back you. Just don’t go getting me in something that’ll come back to haunt me. I’ll want to be reelected, you know.”

“I’ll do my best,” Taylor said with a laugh.

They chatted for a few more minutes over less weighty topics before she needed to go handle one of the hundreds of things that needed her attention. Thankfully, the drive back to D.C. was faster than the one to get down to Fort Hill, and Taylor was back at the Hoover Building by early afternoon. He found Whitaker in her office, hunched over a computer terminal, looking focused.

“Any luck?” He asked.

“Yes. Hubbard’s been a busy boy since he got out of the service.”

“How so?”

“He was cited in an FBI death investigation the year after he discharged involving a gas explosion.”

“How did the FBI get involved?”

“The person who died in the explosion worked at the V.A. Hubbard was noted as a suspect, but was later cleared. The incident was eventually listed as an accidental death caused by a gas leak, and the case was closed.”

“Considering blowing shit up seems to be how he deals with his problems, I’m guessing we’re thinking there’s more to it than that, aren’t we?”

“Yes. The guy who ran the investigation retired last year but lives not far away. I’ve already asked him to come in and talk to us. Hopefully, something in that case can give us a clue on what Hubbard might be up to now.”

“Good. I also might have a lead.”

“Yeah?”

“Hubbard was part of a team looking into a new explosive that he apparently got obsessed over. Normally that wouldn’t mean much, but what we’ve been told about his mental illness …”

“So you’re thinking if he was obsessed with it then, he might still be obsessed with it?”

“Pretty much. He doesn’t seem to give these things up easily. I’m hoping it gives us something we can use to trace him. The only hitch is, the defense contractor he was outsourced to isn’t big on sharing.”

“I can get a subpoena drawn up. It might be a bit shaky, but we might be able to find a judge to sign off. Of course, defense contractors come with armies of lawyers who will fight it tooth and nail before handing anything over, so it could take some time to actually get the information we need.”

“I thought of that and decided to get the information another way.”

“What did you do?” Whitaker said, her hands pausing over her keyboard.

“Don’t give me that look, you just said yourself going through channels would take forever, if it happens at all. These guys would be just as happy to keep any request tied up in appeals for as long as possible. All I did was call a contact and asked if they could find out the details of what Hubbard was working on or if he could get us the name of someone who would talk to us.”

“Passing it off to someone else to do the actual dirty work doesn’t mean you aren’t doing something wrong. Most of what those companies are working on is classified. Just ‘cause you don’t ask how they do it doesn’t mean they aren’t breaking the law.”

Taylor didn’t respond, just met her look. This was the age-old argument between them. They’d managed to find a middle ground now that they were back together, but that didn’t mean she was happy with his method or that he felt compelled to paint inside the FBI’s limited lines.

Finally, Whitaker held up her hands and leaned back, “Hey, I’m not going to stop you. I want to get this guy just as bad, and I care about the Senator’s wellbeing just as much as you do. What I don’t want is to get him and have our evidence against him thrown out because we obtained it illegally. Hubbard needs to be off the street for good, not out on a technicality.”

“Do you really think that’s going to happen? He murdered someone before we ever got involved, threw an explosive device at me, blew up our apartment, a van, and murdered two more secret service agents before I ever called anyone about anything. Even if nothing from this point on is admissible, there’s no chance he’s ever getting out of prison.”

“You’re probably right, but that doesn’t mean we need to be creating additional hurdles. Just, talk to me first next time. I know how much of a pain getting a subpoena would be, that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be other ways to get that.”

Taylor dropped into the chair across from her desk and leaned his head back. She had a point. He’d thought about the subpoena but had basically given up at that and gone looking for something easier. It wouldn’t have taken that much time to call Whitaker first and at least see if she could think of something else before he went straight to skirting the rules.

“Okay, next time I’ll talk to you first.”

“That’s all I ask. So now we wait for my guy to show up or your guy to call?”

“Pretty much. Short of following the Senator to her events and hoping to see him coming, chasing his past is our only option right now.”

“There’s nothing we can do there that the Secret Service isn’t already doing. This could be a bust, but I’m not sure what else we can do at this point.”

“I’m confident we’ll find something. No one does stuff for no reason. Even if he’s trying to be random to keep from being found, no one can eliminate everything that makes them who they are. I know you think he’s too smart and well trained to make a mistake, but he’ll be doing something to give himself away. Even with everything the Bureau trains us to do and all of our hard work, most cases are broken because the suspect overlooks something or screws up. It’s impossible to account for everything.”

“Probably. We’re only trained on how to do the proper preparation to carry off an objective, not to cover our tracks afterward.”

They didn’t have to wait long. After a fruitless half an hour of looking through more records, Whitaker’s retired FBI agent showed up. A grizzled man in his sixties with a well-lined face, Taylor couldn’t help but think he must have been right at retirement when he’d crossed paths with Hubbard.

They made introductions and exchanged brief pleasantries before Whitaker got down to business.

“Can you walk us through the case, Agent Macey?”

“You read the file,” Macey said. “There wasn’t much to it. We were called to the scene of an explosion at a residence when the locals determined the victim, a guy named Steiner, was a Veterans' Affairs OIG investigator, which made his death investigation federal. Our techs traced the explosion to a ruptured gas line and a spark caused when the vic turned on a light switch. They said everything looked on the up and up.”

“You still had to investigate though.”

“Yep. Procedure, ya know, especially since Steiner was an investigator. We looked at his open cases, talked to people he was looking into, but when the M.E. declared it an accidental death, we shelved the case.”

“Hubbard stood out to you?” Taylor asked.

“Yeah. There wasn’t anything specific and once the case was closed there wasn’t any reason to keep looking into him, but something about the man didn’t sit right.”

“Why was the V.A. Inspector General looking into Hubbard?”

“There was an incident at a research lab run by the V.A. Some stuff went missing, and his name showed up as one of the people in the building at the time, so the investigator was looking at him.”

“What went missing?” Taylor asked.

“Dinitrophenol. It was used in some kind of research the lab was experimenting in and was tracked by the FDA, so they had to account for their supply. When some turned up missing, the Inspector General’s office got involved.”

“He was suspected of stealing it?” Taylor asked, wondering why something like that wouldn’t have popped up on Hubbard’s record.

“Not directly, or at least not that we could find in the investigators’ notes. There was a medical testing center in the same building, and his name was on the sign-in sheet at around the time the chemicals went missing. It seems his background in EOD raised enough of a flag for Steiner that he started looking into Hubbard directly. The only reason I looked at him was because he was the last interview Steiner did before his death, which raised a flag for me. I didn’t actually find anything beyond the timing of the interview that indicated Hubbard did anything wrong, and we couldn’t find anything beyond Hubbard’s background that made Steiner suspicious of Hubbard for the theft.”

“Why would his service specialty raise a red flag for the theft of a laboratory chemical?” Whitaker asked.

“Dinitrophenol only has one current commercial use, as a dietary aid, although the FDA has classified it as harmful and some people selling it have gone to jail. Beyond that and whatever they were testing in the lab, the only other use of it was by the military as an agent in some explosives.”

“Which was the connection to Hubbard,” Taylor said.

“Right, but we retraced Steiner’s investigation and didn’t find anything to suggest he went anywhere else in the building besides the testing facility on the first floor. It looks like it was just a coincidence.”

“If you couldn’t find anything to connect him to the theft or the explosion, why do you seem unsurprised that we’re asking about him?” Whitaker asked.

“There wasn’t anything at first. Beyond Hubbard being Steiner’s last interview, the fact that he was former EOD didn’t go unnoticed by me either, considering the way Steiner died, so I looked into him. At first, I didn’t get too excited. You do the job long enough, you realize that coincidences like that are all over the place. After talking to him though …”

“You became more focused.”

“Right. He was … intense. He didn’t trip himself or anything, but the guy was off. I’ve interviewed serial killers that creeped me out less than Hubbard did. If you told me you found a stack of corpses buried in his backyard, I wouldn’t be particularly shocked.”

“You didn’t find anything to connect him to the explosion either though, right?”

“Nope. I’m not an arson expert, mind you, but nothing they found indicated foul play. Steiner’s house had a water heater way past its expiration date and there was serious wear on the connections. They tell me the wear looked natural and was bound to happen at some point. Gas leak explosions like this happen a couple of hundred times every year, so it’s not exactly unprecedented.”

“All right, I think that answers all of our questions. Sorry to bring you up here for it.”

“No problem. I’ve been meaning to come back and visit a few old friends anyways. So can you tell me what you’re looking at Hubbard for?”

Taylor started to answer when Whitaker spoke over him, cutting him off. “We’re not sure; he just popped up as a possible suspect in an active case.”

One side of Macey’s mouth crept up in a slight smile at Whitaker, “Yeah, I get it. Well, you folks take care.”

When Macey left Whitaker looked at Taylor and said, “He might have written off the coincidence, but considering how quick Hubbard is to blow something up when he has a problem, it seems like a stretch that the guy who interviewed him blowing up was just a coincidence.”

“No kidding. If he did steal this stuff and then someone showed up at his doorstep asking questions, I could see him doing something about it.”

“Do they train your guys to set off explosions leaving no trace?”

“EOD guys? I don’t think so. He might have picked up some tricks when was still with Special Forces though. He’s also pretty clever. If he put his mind to it, I think he could manage to pull it off. Maybe …”

Taylor’s phone pinged, interrupting his train of thought. Looking down, Taylor saw Bryant had come through with the information he’d promised. At least, Taylor assumed it was Bryant. The actual email was anonymized and probably wouldn’t track back to Bryant himself, if Taylor had to guess.

Can’t get you a sit-down with anyone on the project, Northbridge has their people sign NDA’s and are serious about prosecuting. I did manage to get a copy of what they were working on. You pretty much had the basics of it; they’re working on a more stable small-scale explosive that they promise will have a high energy impact but minimal footprint. They had some early success in testing but have since stalled on the project. No notes in their records on Hubbard’s work with them, but I have a contact who confirmed that Hubbard was assigned to them as an SME for five months before his sudden discharge. I’ve attached what technical specifications I could find.

Attached to the email were several files. Some were just handwritten notes in what Taylor thought was Bryant’s own handwriting while others were technical documents that looked like they were produced directly by Northbridge.

Taylor forwarded the information to Whitaker and started reading through the documents.

“You know the reams of shit we’d get if legal knew we had what are clearly illegally obtained classified materials?”

“You have clearance.”

“You heard the part where I said illegally obtained, right?”

“They were sent by an anonymous source and he doesn’t directly say I asked for the information anywhere.”

“Splitting hairs won’t help us if they decided to make an example of us.”

“We could delete it all now and wait for a subpoena.”

“No, I’m just pointing it out.”

“Noted, now help me look through this. You’re better at this kind of thing than I am.”

They sat silently for almost an hour, pouring through reams of documents. From what Taylor could see their explosive did work as promised in the field tests. They were able to create a fairly high energy explosion capable of cracking through most casings a device would be hidden in, setting off the underlying explosive, all while smothering the force of the activated device with its own concussive force, pushing in the opposite direction, or at least that’s how Taylor read it. All he knew for sure was that the tests confirmed the explosive was able to both activate and minimize the blast of the test device.

It looked like the only place where they hadn’t succeeded, was in the new explosive's stability. It was a two-part solid that was inactive until the two pieces were put in physical contact, apparently to make the explosive safer to transport. They were designed in thin, long, pliable strips, wrapped inside a plastic sheathing. The idea was that the tech would pull a tab on each one, removing one side of the plastic coating, and pressing the two malleable pieces together. From that point, the explosive would be active, and everyone would have to be careful around them. They’d then set the detonator and haul ass.

The problem Northbridge was having was that once the two pieces were put together, they didn't have a stability that anyone was happy about. About thirty percent of the time the explosive would detonate within a few minutes of being activated, detonator or no. Even hustling, that didn’t give techs enough time to deploy it and get clear, and the army wasn’t about to adopt something that killed techs thirty percent of the time.

“I think I found something,” Whitaker said.

“What?”

“Dinitrophenol, the same stuff that went missing from that lab, is one of the key explosive components. That can’t be a coincidence, right?”

“I seriously doubt it. Is that the only thing he’d need to make this that’s controlled?”

“I’d have to double-check, but maybe.”

“Have we double-checked the chemical traces from either that pipe bomb he threw in Rochester or the bomb in our apartment?”

“You’re thinking he used the same stuff both times, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Maybe not the pipe bomb, but it’s bothered me that the explosion in our apartment was so limited. They said it was a gas line explosion, but even if he’d cut off the line, it should have gone into other floors. He managed to keep the explosion completely centered on our apartment, and didn’t take off the top of the building, which is what I would have expected with a cut gas line. Could he have used this stuff then too?”

“Maybe. I can call and check. Do you really think he’d be compelled to keep using it, even if it was a giveaway? I thought you guys were all about improvisation.”

“That’s SEALs; we’re all about excessive planning. In this case, though, I think it’s his mental illness taking over his training. We’ve had multiple people tell us how obsessive this guy was, so this wouldn’t be a far reach, I don’t think. I mean, I’m not a shrink, but would you be surprised that some part of this guy’s crazy trips him up.”

“No, it makes sense. I guess I’m just surprised. He’s been so methodical and one step ahead of us this whole time, I didn’t expect to find this kind of screw-up. I’ll still put in some calls, have the lab test the samples they collected from all the other explosions we know he set off, to confirm. We should call Cole.”

“He’s going to ignore us,” Taylor said.

“Sure, but that’s on him. We’ll have done what we’re supposed to do.”

While Whitaker called in her request to the FBI lab, who’d taken samples from two of the blasts and whose lab the Secret Service had used for the van explosion, Taylor dialed Cole’s number.

“Taylor, we’re busy here. I said you guys could stay involved, I didn’t say I had time to babysit you,” Cole said when he answered, probably recognizing Taylors number before he answered.

Taylor swallowed the response he wanted to make, trying to do things Whitaker’s way and play nice.

“Sure, I’m just calling in with information we found about Hubbard. We’re pretty sure he keeps using the same explosive and we think it contains traceable materials. I thought you might want to know about it so you can track the chemicals and see if we can’t find where he’s been.”

“Send the information over.”

“And you’ll look into it?”

“Taylor, I don’t have time to mess with this. We’ve got a lot of men in the field that have to be coordinated. We’ll get to it, but this isn’t our priority. I thought I made it clear what our priorities were.”

“You did, but that was before we had specific, actionable intel.”

“Taylor, you keep pushing us on how much of a planner this guy is. He’s been on the move constantly since you ran into him in Rochester. Do you really think he has some bomb shop set up somewhere he keeps going to? Of course, we’ll look into it, because when we get him, we’ll need whatever we can get to put together his prosecution, but this isn’t going to catch this guy or keep my protectee safe. You think this is the key to finding him, feel free to track it down. I don’t care as long as it keeps you out of my hair.”

His piece said, Cole hung up. Taylor couldn’t say he was surprised, since this was exactly how he expected Cole to react. Despite that, he couldn’t get over how target blind they’d become. He’d dealt with a lot of Law Enforcement over the years since he got out of the service, and he’d found a lot of them didn’t have enough imagination, but at least they’d been thorough. Following this trail of evidence seemed like it’d be right up their alley.

“That was about as pointless as I expected,” Taylor said to Whitaker when she finished up her call with the lab.

“I know, but we at least kept them in the loop. He can’t come at us later if he isn’t happy with what we’re doing. The lab’s going to check the samples, but it’ll be several hours at best.”

“Let’s just assume we’re right and go with it. If we’re wrong we’ll have wasted a few hours, but it’s not like we have a lot of other leads at the moment. I’d rather get a head start on this and waste time, than sit on my ass waiting.”