Loose Ends (The Hammer Commission Book 3) Read online

  Mark was sure he was drawing looks; everyone knew something had happened, and they also knew Mark was a fed. Plus both he and Bill had their badges out.

  And Faith was covered in blood, even if it was drying. Working in the medical field, most, if not all of these people knew exactly what blood looked like.

  When they got to lab three, Mark just opened the door and walked right in, not bothering with the isolation protocols.

  Setting his bag down he opened it up and took out the bottle of holy water and a cross. Then as Faith and Bill watched he went over to the glove box and simply ripped the gloves off of it. Sticking his hands inside, he doused all of the samples with holy water while blessing it all with the cross.

  The effect was educational. It all caught fire and shriveled up rather quickly, giving off a fair deal of a black oily smoke.

  "What the hell was that?" Bill asked, stepping back as the smoke was sucked up into the ventilation ducts."

  "Pretty much just that," Mark sighed.

  "Huh?"

  "That was flesh from a devil summoned from Hell. Yes, devils are real, yes most upper levels in the FBI know about it. No, you can't go telling everyone."

  "And you are?"

  "A member of an organization that goes around dealing with them. I'm on loan to the FBI, to help train them on some of this," Mark said and motioned to the glove box which was no longer venting smoke. He leaned forward to look into it again, there was only ash remaining now.

  "So, that's why you have the Interpol badge as well?"

  Mark nodded, "Exactly. Now let's go see what we have to deal with in the way of witnesses."

  Mark led them back up to his brother's office. There were several police cars outside now and more showing up by the minute. Mark grabbed one of the officers who looked to be in charge that he found talking with his brother.

  "There will be a bunch of priests showing up. When they do, take them to lab three, and then leave them alone and see that they're not disturbed."

  The cop looked at him and blinked, "Are you for real?"

  Mark showed him his FBI ID, "Yes, I'm for real. There are going to be a bunch of agents showing up soon as well. This is an FBI crime scene. Do not let any press on the property; Agents Haines and Chance will be taking control once they show up."

  It took Mark about ten minutes after that to find Scott Patrick, the vice president. He was in his office and there were eight others in the room.

  "Okay," Mark said looking around. "I am Agent Mark Levin of Interpol, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This is agent Bill Frey. The sample in lab three that you were working on was a purloined piece of highly restricted military hardware from the bad old days of biological warfare.

  "I don't think I need to tell any of you what that means legally?"

  Mark saw all of their faces pale.

  "Exactly. Each of you are going to be questioned, separately. You will be asked to sign a few things to insure that you do not discuss this ever again. Even among each other, okay?"

  Mark looked around and they all nodded.

  "You will be asked about what you observed, what you learned, and anything else you feel was significant. While we don't believe any of you intentionally broke the law, or even knew of the origins of the sample, there are still questions that might be asked.

  "As for what you learned, well there will be experts in a number of fields going over your reports and your findings. Your work is not going to be buried. So take a little pride in what you did and tell us what you found. If it turns out you found something new and important, you might just find yourself asked to work on the kinds of things that most people in your field only dream of.

  "Now, have a good day, wait here, and don't talk to each other."

  Mark turned to Bill, "Keep an eye on them, when the debrief team shows up, make sure they milk them for all the science that they can get."

  "Where are you going?" Bill asked, surprised.

  Mark looked down at Faith who was almost glued to his side at this point, and had a look in her eyes that he hadn't seen in a good long while.

  "Pressing personal issues," Mark said and left the room causing Faith to start to purr softly at that point.

  5: Mom's House, Brookhaven, New York

  Mark yawned and looked at the clock; it was almost nine, in the morning. Faith was still wrapped around him like she was painted on. He remembered that he sent out the preliminary report to Woods, but told him that he had pressing family issues to deal with. He'd then turned off the phone and spent the next twelve hours concerned with Faith and absolutely nothing else.

  Faith nuzzled him and then yawned.

  "So, what set this off?" Mark asked. "And don't tell me it was killing that guy,"

  Faith smiled and pulled herself up a bit to give him a kiss. "It was completely that guy," she purred.

  "I find it hard to believe that killing someone would put you in heat, Faith," Mark sighed.

  "Weeeelllll, truth is, now that you're going to be around for a while, I thought that it might be a good time to have a few more kids," she said and looking away, blushing. "Killing him just sort of set me off a few days earlier than expected. I was hoping to have you back home when this happened."

  "Uh-huh. And what did Helena say about this?"

  "This is just between you and me, Love. She doesn't know."

  "I thought she was in charge?" Mark asked, a little surprised. He knew that they'd all coordinated with Helena on their second and third litters.

  "She would have said no," Faith growled, "and then there would have been a fight, and it would have gotten ugly. I only have three cubs! I want more! We're getting older, Mark! I want at least one more litter before I can't have anymore!"

  Mark sighed and hugged her close. None of his wives had ever even hinted that they wanted more children. Of course Charity and Hope each had five, and Helena had four. Faith had been kind of short changed; only having one cub in each litter.

  "You should have told me, I thought you were happy with just the three."

  "I'm sorry," Faith said.

  "I'm sorry I didn't know sooner," Mark said and kissed her. "Next time, ask me, don't ask Helena."

  "Thank you, Love," Faith purred and started to kiss him again. Mark reached over to the nightstand and picking up his phone he turned it back on. He didn't doubt that there were a lot of people looking for him this morning, but these last few years he really hadn't been paying his family the kind of attention they deserved, so the others could all just go pound salt until he was ready.

  Sure enough, he had six voicemails, and a dozen pages. Shaking his head he dialed Helena. It was six am in Oregon, so he was pretty sure she'd be in bed.

  "Yes?" she said, and he could hear her yawning.

  "Hi, Hon. Not sure when I'll be leaving here yet, things kind of blew up and I'm still sorting through a bunch of it."

  "And you woke me up for that?" Helena complained.

  "Faith is pregnant, and you will not give her any grief about it at all, or I will be very upset with you, understand?"

  "What?"

  Mark chuckled, Helena didn't sound very sleepy at all anymore.

  "There was some violence yesterday and it sort of set her off. Now, I need to go put out some other fires, as much as I'd like to linger in bed."

  "She, I, ... I didn't know, Mark."

  Mark was surprised; Helena was not one often at a loss for words.

  "She was afraid you'd say no," Mark said, and gave a little growl.

  "Well, I am the alpha, Hon. You know that," Helena said, sounding rather apologetic.

  "And I'm yours," Mark reminded her. "Some decisions are mine to make, understand?"

  "Yes, dear," Helena sighed in a way that let Mark know there would be a discussion about this later.

  "Hopefully I'll be home in a few days. Bye, Hon."

  "Bye."

  Mark hung up and then sat up on the bed, dragging Faith along with him.


  "I need to shower, eat, and then check all of these messages," Mark told her.

  "But it's so nice and warm in bed!" She leered at him.

  "And tonight we can pick up where we left off this morning. However I have a job to do, and if you're not pregnant by now, I've got other problems." Mark snorted.

  "Yeah, because they're all going to be going into season as soon as they find out you're more than willing to father some more cubs!"

  "And here I thought seventeen would have been enough," Mark sighed, but he still couldn't help but smile. More kids, yeah, he was such a sucker for his wives and children.

  "You have seventeen, I just have three. Helena only has four; I'm surprised she hasn't ambushed you already."

  "I think she feels like they're all hers as well," Mark said and shrugged. "I need to get up and get around, you can go back to sleep if you want."

  "I'll go make you breakfast, now go shower."

  By the time Mark got to his brother's office, he'd listened to all of the voice mails and read all of the text messages. One of the voice mails was from the monsignor of the local church, letting him know that they'd taken care of everything. One was from Woods, letting him know that he was now officially off the case, Haines and Chance had now taken over from him and he could tell them what he knew, then go and enjoy his vacation.

  Then there was one each from Jeff Haines, Thomas, Bill Frey, and his partner Michael. Michael's was about the barbeque in Oregon next week, so Mark just texted him back a reply letting him know things were still on. The others just wanted to talk to him about the details of the case before he left.

  When he got to the lab, he went and saw Haines and Chance first, they'd set up an office in the building, as they were still interviewing people and going through the archives and other records.

  "Jeff, Rich," Mark said walking into the office and shaking hands with agents Haines and Chance, "Find anything interesting?"

  Haines shook his head, "Not really, Mark. As near as we can tell so far, this Smith guy bought his way onto the board about three years ago after making some major stock purchases. He had a couple of small herbalist companies that import stuff from all over the world, and he got a contract to supply a few of the large beverage companies, which is where he got most of his money from.

  "According to your brother, he had started bringing them interesting samples about five years ago, and had a lot of worthwhile connections with people working in the rain forests in South America. So when he suddenly bought in and wanted a spot on the board, no one thought twice about it."

  Mark nodded. "So what do we know about the guy?"

  "Well, he's been doing business with a few NGO's in South and Central America. He's had a couple of run-ins with customs, both ours and a few other countries. Nothing much really, until last month.

  "What happened last month?" Mark asked.

  "Last month he got a large safe for his house, and a bunch of biological gear," Chance said with a sigh. "We searched his house last night, and found the safe full of gold, and a sample of the culture from the lab."

  "And we think that he had more samples, we just don't know how many," Haines finished.

  "That's not good. Did you destroy the sample you found?" Mark asked.

  "Yes, we had it blessed and all of that. Woods says that these are samples of a devil you killed on a jet?"

  "They got sucked into a jet engine," Mark said, nodding. "I just never expected any of them to survive that."

  "Who would?"

  "So, how did this stuff get from that engine to my brother's lab?" Mark asked.

  "We're still working on that," Chance said. "I called Hill Air Force base an hour ago, they said that the airline simply trucked in the replacement engines, hired a local outfit to swap them, then trucked the broken engines off to one of their repair shops. I got a few agents poking around quietly to see if they can find just where those engines went. We don't want to scare anybody off."

  Mark nodded, "Any word on the kidnappers? Have you been able to tie Smith to them?"

  Haines shook his head, "That's been kind of strange. We haven't been able to draw any direct connection at all. Agent Frey is heading up the investigation on that, and so far nothing points to Smith. Also, why would they want to bust into the lab and get a sample if they worked for Smith? Smith already had a sample."

  "Huh, I hadn't thought about that," Mark replied. "Did any of the workers here have anything in the way of intelligence on the case?"

  "No, most of them didn't even know who Smith was. They don't pay a lot of attention to the board members who aren't scientists or researchers here."

  "What about science data?"

  "Oh, they got quite a bit of that. Woods isn't sure how much of it he wants to send on to the DOD or the CDC. Apparently there is some concern about sharing information on devils with people who just might try to make them," Haines said shaking his head.

  "Yeah, I can understand that. What's been done with the data so far?"

  "Well, we had our geeks purge it from all of their servers and made sure that there was only one copy made, which we sent on to Woods after making sure there was nothing relevant to the case in it."

  Mark nodded again. "Okay. I'll sit down and write up a detailed report in a few hours, I need to talk to my brother next. I may go take a look at Smith's house as well."

  "You know, you're supposed to be on vacation," Haines said, "Woods even told me you're off the case."

  "Yeah, yeah, I know. But my brother and my wife were involved, so I just want to take a look around before I head out of here. I'll let you know if I find anything interesting, I should be out of your hair tomorrow."

  Haines nodded, "Take your work laptop with you, I'll send you copies of the reports. You're still the originating agent; I'll keep you in the loop."

  "Thanks, Jeff," Mark said and heading out of the office, went in search of his brother.

  He found his bother in his office talking to several of his researchers, one of which Mark recognized as the doctor who'd been in charge of the lab they'd just shut down.

  "Come back in an hour, I need to talk to my brother," Thomas said as Mark came into the room.

  They all nodded, got up and filed out of the room.

  "So, how's everybody taking it?" Mark asked.

  "Some are pissed, some are scared, and the rest are both pissed and scared," Thomas sighed, "We just lost about four million dollars worth of time and effort, and that's not counting the money we would have made, if the research had panned out."

  "That's a pretty big if," Mark pointed out, "and seeing as what the stuff you were working on was, the chance of unexpected side effects was pretty good."

  "Just what was that stuff, Mark?"

  "Well, I'm not sure you'd believe me if I told you," Mark chuckled sitting down on a chair across from his brother's desk.

  "I just had someone try to kidnap me; one of my now dead coworkers actually did kidnap my sister-in-law, and got killed for it. Then the FBI as well as a group of priests descend on my lab, question half my people, and go through all of my records.

  "They did have warrants; by the way, Todd was very happy.

  "So, anyway, I have all of this happen and you're worried I'll believe you? It's obvious that the government believes in this, and believes in it pretty seriously."

  Mark nodded, "That's a fair point, but still, you'd be surprised. So, you know all that stuff they taught us in Sunday school? About Heaven and Hell, and devils and all of that?"

  Thomas nodded, "Yeah, sure, what of it?"

  Mark smiled, "It's all true."

  "What?!"

  "Well, maybe not all of it, things always get a little confused in the retelling and stuff. But the big parts are true. And that specimen came from a devil that was sucked into the engine of a jet airplane as it tried to murder me a couple of months ago."

  "You're not joking, are you?" Thomas said.

  "Nope."

&nbs
p; "So that job you do for the Church?"

  "Is just a cover for what I really do for the Church."

  "Which is?"

  "I investigate reports of devils and demons. I deal with any that are found. I deal with the people who summon them. I also deal with other supernatural affairs, from time to time, but normally only if the Church gets involved."

  Mark watched Thomas as he shook his head, sighed, and then shook his head again.

  "As much as I want to say you're full of it, the weight of the evidence tells me that you're not. So what happens next?"

  "Well first of all, have you hired some bodyguards and private security?"

  Thomas nodded, "Agent Haines recommended a reputable firm and they're sending out a team of people sometime today. I'm also installing twenty-four hour armed guards on the campus. You were right about the town rolling over. Of course the story that the press ended up with was more than enough to shut them up."

  "Oh? What story was that?"

  "That a South American drug lord tried to infiltrate the labs and use them to make illegal drugs, and when discovered by the FBI died in a desperate shoot out."

  "Shoot out?" Mark said surprised.

  "I saw how much blood was in that car; Faith really did a number on him, didn't she?"

  Mark laughed, "Yeah, Faith is a tough one all right, shot him with his own gun, quite a few times."

  Thomas nodded, "So, again, what happens now? Are these people still going to be interested in me? In the lab?"

  Mark shrugged, "I'm not sure, honestly, but I doubt it. There was obviously a big event here, and that brought the government in. Further, the guy behind it all is dead and has been labeled publicly as a criminal. However," Mark reached into his pocket and pulled out a memory stick and tossed it on to Thomas' desk. "I need you to copy all of the files from your research on that project onto that memory stick."

  "Mark, they erased all of it last night. The purged all of our data."

  "Sure they did," Mark chuckled, "I know you Thomas, you had a hidden backup someplace and they never found it."