All the Wrong Moves by Merline Lovelace Read Free Book Online Page A

and attempted murder, with three counts of transporting illegal aliens into the U.S.”
    “Nice guy.”
    “Almost as nice as his traveling companion.”
    I certainly agreed with that after Googling up Dead Guy Number One.
    “We also got a preliminary report on the bullets. Appears they were M118LRs, chambered in a 7.62mm.”
    “Translation?”
    “They’re special rounds manufactured primarily for military sharpshooters. The markings on one round indicate they might be part of a batch purchased for use by USMC snipers. We won’t know for sure until we get the final ballistic report.”
    Uh-oh! I’m not usually real good at connecting the dots but these were too big and fat even for me to miss. Three U.S. Marines dead in the shoot-out down in Colombia. The prime suspect in that ambush killed by a marine sniper bullet. Hard to stretch that into mere coincidence.
    “There’s a USMC detachment at Fort Bliss,” Comb-Over put in. “They conduct surface-to-air missile training for navy and marine personnel. Stingers and Avengers.”
    I fidgeted a little in my chair but didn’t say anything. No need to advertise the fact that I’d enjoyed a really intense weekend with one of the instructors at the Surface-to-Air Weapons Officer Course. The captain and I parted company soon afterward but the memories lingered—right up until I was jerked back into the present by Mitch’s low murmur.
    “The snipers of the sky.”
    I shot him a curious look. Was he remembering his navy days? Had he been trained to fire one of those shoulder-held Stingers?
    Seeming to retreat inside himself for a moment, he dropped his glance to his Dr Pepper can. My glance followed his down and lingered on his hand. It was strong and weathered like the rest of him. It was also ringless.
    That didn’t mean squat, of course. Lots of married men don’t wear wedding rings. My jerk of an ex, for example. Still, it said a lot for my state of my mind after a close encounter with persons of the dead variety that I hadn’t paid much attention to Agent Mitchell’s bare left hand until this moment.
    “I’ll contact the lieutenant colonel who commands the marine detachment,” Comb-Over said as he angled away from me and wedged his notebook open a minuscule three or four inches to make a note.
    Geesh! This was getting ridiculous. You’d think I was sporting a hammer and sickle on my uniform instead of a subdued, desert-toned Velcro patch that identified me as one of the Good Guys.
    For a moment or two I seriously contemplated handing over the manila envelope with the copies of the digitized boot print and retiring to the bar and Pancho’s more genial company. I might have done just that if I hadn’t caught Mitch’s eye-roll and Sheriff Alexander’s barely smothered grunt. The fact that they didn’t like this smarmy little CID jerk, either, kept me in place.
    When I did present the print, everyone went nuts over its clarity. So much so that both the FBI and CID wanted full access to all data downloaded from EEEK.
    I wasn’t precisely sure about Harrison Robotics’s proprietary rights or DARPA’s policy vis-à-vis handing over test data but I was kinda out-gunned here. I resorted to a stall to give me time to discuss the matter with All Bent and my supervisor.
    “My guys are processing the data as we speak. We’re talking hundreds of millions of gigabytes. I’ll make it available as soon as it’s downloaded.”
    When the cop party broke up a short time later, I decided on one more shot of tequila. I took it at the bar and ordered a bowl of Pancho’s green chili stew as a chaser.
    Now, don’t go all preachy and judgmental on me. I know my limit. I won’t tell you what it is, but suffice it to say that with a family history like mine it’s a sure bet I don’t overindulge in hard liquor. Right now, though, I wasn’t particularly eager to head back to CHU-ville and another night punctuated by Pen’s equine whistles.
    I was nursing the tequila when