Dying For LA by Ian Jones (top fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

pushed open the doors and led the way into a large open-plan office.

‘Say John, I think you’ve been stuck dealing with some assholes up to now, let’s hope these next assholes ain’t, well … assholes.’

‘You say you’re the chief?’ John asked as they crossed the room.

‘Yeah, but not here in glamour town. Real police. Special department.’

He gave John a wink and led the way into a conference room with a big table in the centre.

Chief Brady was already seated, as was Truman. There was a large black man wearing a sharp suit and a tie looking at him with interest who stood up when they came in and shook John’s hand.

‘Hi John, I’m Kyle Warner,’ he told him passing over a business card.

‘Thanks,’ John said and flipped the card. CIA.

They all sat down and John looked around expectantly.

‘We’re waiting for one other,’ Brady announced. ‘We sent a car to the airport to get him.’

‘It’s a her. No need to hang around, we may as well get started,’ Warner said.

They asked John to repeat exactly what had gone down at the Metro station and he did so, it was obvious they had already been briefed as nobody showed any reaction. Warner made a few notes but asked no questions.

‘So John, you told Chief Brady that in your opinion it wasn’t a terrorist attack?’ Keane asked.

John nodded and explained his rationale based on the shots that were fired.

Warner also nodded. ‘Yeah, and I agree with you. I got the full crime scene reports and it’s just as you say. We are leaving it with the press that it’s terrorists at the moment so you will be seeing it all over the news but I want to keep most of this quiet for now until we find out more. I have to say John; from our side I’m fucking grateful you were there. Every witness from the platform confirmed what you did. You’re a hero.’

‘John, what can you tell us about the men down in the Metro? We got three dead guys, but so far only one ID,’ Keane asked.

‘I’m not sure about their nationality. Two of them, and I was on the ground so I am guessing this was one of the men standing next to me; spoke to another at the far end, maybe the guy I shot on the escalator. I recognised it somehow, but I still can’t place it. Eastern, maybe Arabic at a guess, but I can’t be sure.’

Keane produced a photograph and placed it on the table. It was a young man, mid-twenties with short dark wiry hair and an expressionless face. He was standing on a flight of steps looking down at the camera, wearing a dark green coat done all the way up.

‘This is Pol Ritorsky. Polish, of Russian descent. Twenty-seven. No record of immigration into the US, but we got a hit on Interpol. He is wanted in Lithuania for the murder of a doctor there. He disappeared almost a year ago, and we think he came in through Canada about six months back as it looks like he may have been on a boat that came into Quebec, we are doing all we can to track him.’

John looked at the photo. It could have been one of the men on the platform or the escalator. He hadn’t heard anyone speaking Polish.

‘But they did speak in English. One of them spoke, but it wasn’t his native language, then another said; “It’s not here,” but he sounded clear as a bell,’ he told them.

‘Hmmm,’ mused Keane, scratching his head. ‘It’s not here?’

‘That’s the thing. That’s why it was a hit. They were looking for someone. Or more likely something judging by what John heard them say,’ Warner said, reading from a sheet of paper. ‘It’s right here, John said it last night. We should have got going a lot earlier.’ He looked accusingly across at Brady and Truman.

‘No argument from me,’ Keane agreed.

‘But why make it look like a terrorist attack?’ Brady asked, speaking for the first time. ‘It makes no sense; they must know how we would react.’

‘Yeah, and that’s why they did it. Because they know the panic it will set in and know what we will throw at it. The fact it was a hit will never be picked up. There will be dozens of us on the plot, different agencies, huge amount of publicity. Perfect cover,’ Warner stated.

‘It just worked out, and lucky for us, Mr Smith here happened to be there. If he wasn’t, we would be chasing our asses, and likely a whole lot more dead,’ Keane said.

Warner nodded sombrely.

‘For sure. Leave maybe a couple of survivors, no reliable witnesses, then nobody can really tell us anything. We have a bunch of armed terrorists on the loose and we got to protect the city. But we know different thanks to Mr Smith. We need to start at the beginning, Captain Truman did you get anything from the surrounding cameras?’

Truman stood up, then sat down again quickly.

‘Well, we picked us up some footage. We got them arriving and leaving in a Ford Transit van, it’s an old model, with fraudulent plates on it, so we got no hits anyplace. Five men got out, all wearing some kinda uniform it looks like. Footage ain’t very clear but we sent it off for definition, we may get lucky.’

He placed several black and white photographs on the table, and they were passed around. They were all very similar, just taken from different angles and locations. Five men; getting out of a van, crossing the road, gathering outside the Metro station and finally entering. Then a couple of shots of two men getting back into the van.

‘Nothing from inside the station,’ Truman continued, ‘They shot out all the cameras as they went through, must have checked it out beforehand.’

John picked up a picture. The men were all wearing basically the same clothing. All wore beanie hats, and all had their heads lowered. He looked