Death Echo

Rosario, Washington, state of.”
    â€œWhat’s up?”
    â€œAn Indian on the rez bought it, execution style. Half his head blown off and his trailer burned down around his dead ears.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œWeapon was an SR-1 Vektor. Silenced, from the condition of the bullets. Less deformation that way. Either the victim or the killer—or both—had ties to the item we discussed Sunday.”
    â€œSometimes I wish that Berlin still had a wall,” Duke said. “I’m told this job was a hell of a lot easier back then. How good is your source?”
    â€œFBI. They get called in on major rez crimes.”
    â€œYou trust an FBI agent?”
    Cooperation between the two agencies was a minefield filled with back-stabbing, misdirection, and agent eat officer.
    Politics as usual.
    â€œThe agent owed me a favor,” Harrow said. “Even if he didn’t, he’s reliable.”
    â€œStay on top of it,” the DDO said. “If it moves off the rez to Canada, somebody will stick us with the ticket.”
    â€œThen I’m praying it doesn’t.”
    â€œNo shit.”
    Neither one of them wanted to testify before the kind of political investigation committees that would be formed if the op that wasn’t quite the CIA’s went south.

22
    DAY THREE
ROSARIO
7:48 A.M .
    S hurik Temuri trimmed his fingernails with a very sharp Japanese folding knife. The big, wedge-shaped blade hadn’t been designed for manicures, but Temuri didn’t care. He simply wanted to flash the lethal knife as he browbeat the two stupid Americans.
    Once the knife appeared, any Georgian with balls would have pulled his own knife and begun working on fingernails or other body parts. But it seemed that Lovich and Amanar had lived a soft life too long to recognize the old-country insult of an unsheathed knife.
    It was the same problem with the language the cousins spoke—an outdated, corrupt form of what any proper Georgian would speak.
    â€œSo what did your informant tell you?” Temuri asked Amanar.
    â€œDon’t call him an informant,” Amanar said unhappily. “He’s the chief of police. He briefed me along with other members of the city council, that’s all.”
    â€œPolicemen are always informants to politicians.” Temuri shaved off a piece of nail. “Unless they’re the politician as well as the policeman.”
    â€œLook, I keep telling you that you aren’t back in the old country,” Amanar said. “This system is different.”
    â€œWhat is it Americans say? Shit of the bull?” Temuri waved the knife. “Police and politics are the same everywhere. What did he say to you?”
    Blank faced, Lovich looked out the window. He wanted no part in this conversation.
    Amanar started to argue with Temuri, then shrugged. The Georgian simply didn’t grasp the nuances of American politics. Or maybe the other way around. Whatever.
    Either way, Blackbird needed a captain.
    â€œI was told that the Indian was shot twice in the back of the head,” Amanar said. “Then the murderers doused the trailer with kerosene and lit it off. Any real evidence was destroyed in the fire.”
    â€œMurderers? More than one?” Temuri asked.
    â€œUh…that’s what the police chief said.”
    Another crescent of nail shaving hit the carpet. “One child with balls could have executed the Indian and burned the place down.”
    â€œLook, I’m just telling you what I was told.”
    Temuri grunted.
    Amanar kept talking in his out-of-date dialect. “The body was almost burned beyond recognition. The assumption is that it’s Tommy. Considering that he isn’t answering his cell phone and can’t be found, we’re going with Tommy as the corpse. Even if he’s alive and running, we can’t count on him anymore. My cousin and I are really, really unhappy with how this is turning out.”
    â€œYeah,” Lovich said in English. “This talk about an execution isn’t making me feel the love.”
    Temuri gave him a hard look for speaking in English. Then he turned his attention back to Amanar. “Is there a problem?”
    â€œThe chief didn’t say anything about any execution,” Amanar said. “He thinks it was some kind of ongoing, uh, argument about fishing rights or something among the Indians.”
    â€œWhy, then, is your Federal Bureau of