Page 97 of Nobody's Hero

‘I think if she’d wanted to lie, she’d have been more inventive,’ he said.

‘That’s what I think as well,’ Draper said. ‘I think Hobbs played us. He dangled a worm in front of us, one he knew we’d bite. And it worked. His foster daughter is alive.’

Her phone buzzed in her jacket pocket. She grabbed it and checked the screen.

She accepted the call.

She listened.

Then she said, ‘Smerconish has found something.’

‘Is it a waterbed?’ Koenig said.

Chapter 103

Smerconish hadn’t found a waterbed.

But he had found the truck that had collected the NorseBoat in Maine. He’d also found a bunch of dead guys. They were in a paint wholesaler’s abandoned warehouse in Logan Heights, one of the oldest neighbourhoods in San Diego. The warehouse was a stone’s throw from the I-5, the route Smerconish now knew Jakob Tas had taken. Whoever had killed them had made no effort to move their bodies. They hadn’t been hidden. No one was in a rolled-up carpet. They were lying where they’d died. The killer hadn’t even bothered pulling the warehouse’s roller door all the way down.

A portable fingerprint scanner and access to every database in the world confirmed the dead guys’ identities. Cora Pearl was an ex-paramedic, ex-bounty hunter and ex-MMA champion. She was now ex-alive. She’d had her throat slashed. The wounds were clean and neat. Even depth. Looked like they had been done by a surgeon. Smerconish said he doubted this had been the first throat the killer had cut. The second person was Konstantin. The waterbed guy. Hobbs had called him a monosyllabic brute. And maybe he had been. Or maybe he didn’t have good English. Didn’t matter now, though. Not with a bullet hole in the back of his head. Smerconish said the entry wound showed muzzle imprint. Konstantin had been shot at point-blank range, the end of the muzzle pressed against his skull before the trigger had been pulled.

The last dead guy was an Australian called Jenkins. He had a string of smuggling offences. He’d almost made it out of the old paint warehouse, but a bullet in the back of his knee had taken him down and a bullet in the brain finished him off.

There was no sign of Jakob Tas.

Koenig didn’t need Smerconish to tell him what had happened. Tas had killed Konstantin first. Walked up to him and put a gun to the back of his head. Probably a silenced weapon, probably controlled his fall. He’d then slit Pearl’s throat. They were the threat and had to be taken care of first. They were fighters. Hardened mercenaries. The Australian had been shot while attempting to flee.

Koenig figured there was no one left. That Tas had killed his entire team. That was an all-in play. You couldn’t leave a couple alive and tell them they were going to be OK. That they definitely weren’t going to be killed later. It didn’t work that way.

The truck was still in the warehouse, but the boat and the trailer were gone.

‘He’s switched vehicles,’ Koenig said.

‘He has,’ Draper confirmed. ‘And the warehouse was in a run-down part of Logan Heights. There are no cameras and plenty of major roads he could have taken. Smerconish has lost him.’

‘He must be furious.’

‘Actually, he’s not.’

‘He isn’t? Why?’

‘Because Smerconish thinks he knows why Jakob Tas is in San Diego,’ she said.

Chapter 104

‘Smerconish believes that because Jakob Tas smuggled a boat all the way from Maine, the threat is water-based,’ Draper said.

Koenig rolled his eyes.Of coursethe threat was water-based. It was such an obvious conclusion that no one on the Gulfstream had bothered to voice it. Tas had risked hauling the boat almost 3,500 miles, across multiple states and multiple time zones. He’d only done that because he’d had to. If it was somethinginsidethe boat, he’d have unloaded it somewhere quiet and scuttled the boat in a handy lake.

‘Any specific water-based threat, or is that all he has?’ Koenig said. ‘Because the way this is unfold—’

‘Tas’s target is Naval Base San Diego,’ Draper cut in. ‘He believes the boat is a bomb.’

Koenig shook his head. ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘He thinks it does.’

‘I agree it’s a water-based threat, but it’s not a bomb. He could have gotten explosives anywhere. He wouldn’t have to smuggle them into the country.’