The Beltway Assassin by Richard Fox Page B

particularly Mexican insult, and Zike decided she needed more in the way of persuasion. He nodded to one of his men, and a gloved hand went over her mouth.
    Zike slammed a steel-shod boot heel against the drug dealer’s shin. The blow snapped her tibia and canted her entire body as the leg refused to bear weight. She screamed into the glove covering her mouth and tears streamed down her face. A smirk went across Zike’s face as the drug dealer’s bravado transformed into begging after just the right amount of pain. 
    “Now, where did he go?” Zike asked. His man loosened the grip on her mouth.
    She responded with rapid-fire Spanish between sobs.
    “English. Why is that so hard?” Zike nodded to his man, and the glove went back over her mouth. Her pleading almost made this trip worth the trouble.
    “If you spoke Spanish, you’d know she saw him go up the stairs, and that was it,” the Iranian said from behind him. The Iranian, in a DC police officer’s uniform, had a combat knife in his hand. He flipped the grip on the weapon several times, admiring the perfect balance within the blade.
    The drug dealer’s cries worsened.
    “Where’d you get that?” Zike asked.
    “On the other roof, where we lost our prey.” The Iranian tilted the blade in the light, reading the inscription. “A masterwork, truly.”
    “So she doesn’t know where Garcia went?” Zike asked. The Iranian shook his head.
    Zike shot the drug dealer twice in the chest and stormed out of the building.
    The Iranian ran his index finger along the hilt, testing it for the balance point. He’d seen a blade like this once before. A silent man who moved like a viper had nearly killed him with this blade’s twin in the Houthi lands of northern Yemen. The scar running across his forearm was testimony to the fight, which the Iranian had survived by running into the empty desert after knocking his attacker down a flight of stairs.
    It was rare that the Iranian met his match in the shadow games he played for Tehran. He’d never learned who the silent man, or the cohort of equally deadly men who’d attacked his weapons depot, worked for. He’d narrowed the possibilities down to Saudis, British SAS, or the CIA. They were the only ones in the world with the resources and intelligence to come after him so deep in friendly territory.
    If the silent man was here…An idea came to the Iranian. One to let the silent man know he was playing a dangerous game.

CHAPTER 6
     
    Irene stirred powdered creamer into her oily coffee and sneered. This was what passed for caffeine in the FBI? Before being recruited into the Caliban Program, her time at the CIA’s cubical farm at Langley had come with a perk of fresh-brewed and moderately palatable coffee—not to mention access to a hot dog vending machine. How anyone could sustain brain function on the slop in her hand was a mystery to Irene.
    She glanced at a clock as she went back to her workstation. There was another hour yet before the next brainstorming session on the design of the IED that had blown up McBride on the Beltway. The TEDAC bigwigs had sliced her and a dozen analysts off from the main brain trust to focus on the McBride killing once word of the explosion on the Beltway had reached the FBI. Irene hadn’t complained; it wasn’t like the results of the other investigation were hidden from her.
    “What do those grey beards think they’re doing? This is complete crap,” a skinny man in plaid pants and white lab coat said. He gave Irene a once-over as he walked past her.
    “How do they expect us to get anywhere if they cut us off from test results?” a second man asked. He had a bald pate and a belly that bespoke of too much time in a chair and easy access to doughnuts. Irene recognized them both from the bombings team and stopped to admire the motivational poster on the wall.
    “I mean, if they got the results, give them to us, and we can start building out the guy’s network,” the skinny guy