Four Blind Mice (Alex Cross 8)

“I still don’t have an answer for you. I’m sorry. This is a big decision for me and my family. If it’s any consolation, once I land I don’t jump around.”

“Okay, that’s fine with me. You understand I can’t leave the offer on the table indefinitely?”

I nodded. “I appreciate the way you’re handling this. You always this patient?”

“Whenever I can be,” Burns said, and left it at that. He picked up a couple of manila folders from the coffee table between our chairs. He slid them my way.

“I have something for you, Alex. Take a look.”

Chapter 105

“MORE OF THE Bureau’s resources that you want me to see,” I said, and smiled at Burns.

“You’ll like this. It’s real good stuff. I hope it’s helpful. I want to see you get some closure on this army case. We’re interested in this one too.”

I reached into one of the folders and pulled out what looked like a faded patch from a jacket. I held it up to examine the cloth more closely. The patch was green khaki with what looked like a crossbow sewed into the fabric. There was also a straw doll on the patch. An eerie, awful straw doll. The same kind I’d first seen in Ellis Cooper’s house.

“The patch came from the jacket of a sixteen-year-old gang member in New York City. The gang he belonged to is named Ghost Shadows. They use different coffee shops on Canal Street in New York as headquarters. It’s called roving turf,” Burns said.

“A task force we ran with the NYPD brought the gangbanger in. He decided to trade some information he thought might be valuable to the NYPD. It wasn’t. But it could be valuable to you.”

“How so?” I asked.

“He says he sent you several e-mails during the past month, Alex. He used computers at a technical high school in New York.”

“He’s Foot Soldier?” I asked, and shook my head in amazement.

“No. But he may be a messenger for Foot Soldier. He’s Vietnamese. The symbol of the crossbow is from a popular folktale. In the story, the crossbow could kill ten thousand men every time it was fired. The Ghost Shadows think of themselves as very powerful. They’re big into symbols, myth, magic.

“As I said, this kid and his fellow gangbangers spend most of their time in the coffee shops. Playing tien lên, drinking café su da. The gang moved to New York from Orange County in California. Over one hundred fifty thousand Viet refugees have settled in Orange County since the seventies. The gang in New York favored Vietnamese-style criminal activities. Smuggling illegal aliens — called snakeheads — credit card fraud, software and computer parts heists. That help you?”

I nodded. “Of course it does.”

Burns handed me another folder. “This might help too. It’s information about the former leader of the Viet gang.”

“Tran Van Luu.”

Burns nodded. “I did a tour in ’sixty-nine and ’seventy. I was in the Marines. We had our own recon people. They’d get dropped into hostile territory, just like Starkey and company. Vietnam was a guerilla war, Alex. Some of our people acted like guerillas. Their job was to wreak havoc behind enemy lines. They were tough, brave, but more than a few of them got incredibly desensitized. Sometimes they practiced situational ethics.”

“Wreak havoc?” I said. “You’re talking about terrorism, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” Burns nodded. “That’s what I just said.”

Chapter 106

THE FBI FLEW me out to Colorado this time. Ron Burns had made this his case now too. He wanted the person or persons behind the long string of murders.

The isolation unit at Florence seemed as oppressive as it had been on my first visit there. As I entered the Security Housing Unit, guards in khaki uniforms watched me through bulletproof-glass observation windows. The doors were either bright orange or mint green — odd. There were cameras every ten feet along the bland, sand-colored walls.

The cell where Tran Van Luu and I met had a table and two chairs, which were bolted to the floor. Three guards in body armor and thick gloves brought him to me this time around. I wondered if there had been trouble recently? Violence?

Luu’s hands and ankles were cuffed and manacled for our meeting. The gray hairs hanging from his chin seemed even longer than at our last visit.

I took the jacket patch Burns had given me out of the pocket of my coat. “What does this mean? No more bullshit.”

“Ghost Shadows. You know that already. The crossbar is just folklore. Just a design.”

“And the straw doll?”