Free The Midnight House by Alex Berenson Page A

soldiers there. Three months later, two Rangers, the most junior guys on the squad, were killed by an IED in Afghanistan.”
    Duto slid across three photographs. The first two were similar, shots of broad-shouldered men in camouflage uniforms, both smiling almost shyly. The third focused on a blown-out Humvee, its armored windows shattered, smoke pouring from its passenger compartment.
    “This one, we don’t know if it was related to the others—it was on a stretch of road where another convoy got hit the next week. Still, they were part of the squad, so it’s possible.”
    “First the doctor in San Diego, then the two Rangers in Afghanistan,” Shafer said.
    “Correct. Then we’re back stateside.”
    Duto handed Wells two more photographs, the same macabre before and after. The first was a standard CIA identification shot. A paunchy man in a sport coat, striped tie, thick black hair. The second photo, a D.C. police shot. The same man, faceup on a cracked slab of sidewalk, dress shirt stained black with blood. His wallet sat open and empty on the curb, a few inches from his shoes.
    “Three months after that was Kenneth Karp. Shot in D.C., east of Logan Circle, four months ago. About one thirty in the morning. Outside an ATM. He was one of ours, so it was reported to us, of course, but nobody made the connection. The cops figured it for a robbery gone bad, and so did our security officers. The ATM tape doesn’t show anything.”
    “He live in D.C.? ” Shafer said.
    Duto shook his head. “Rosslyn. Next question, why was he pulling five hundred dollars from an ATM in the District in the middle of the night? There’s a strip club a block from the bank. Karp had a weekly poker game in Adams Morgan. Apparently he had a routine. Leave the game at one, make a pit stop, get home at three. Wife never knew.”
    “He did the same thing every week? ”
    “That’s what his buddies told the cops.”
    “Somebody could have figured out the routine, waited for him.”
    “In retrospect, yes. At the time, we had no reason to think so.”
    “What’d he do for 673? ” Wells said.
    “He was the senior translator,” Duto said. “Spoke Arabic, Pashto, Urdu.”
    Duto handed over a photograph, a bald-headed black man whose uniform stretched tight across his massive shoulders. Jerry Williams. No second picture, since Williams was missing, not dead.
    “Williams’s wife reported him missing in New Orleans two months ago. Last seen at a bar in the Gentilly district. North of the French Quarter. He retired last year, after the squad broke up. He knew Arabic from his Special Ops training, so he worked with Karp on the translations. He was having marital problems, and the cops down there didn’t look too hard for him. If he’s alive, he’s laying low. He hasn’t been seen since, hasn’t used his ATM card or credit cards, hasn’t called his family, hasn’t flown under his own name. The cops haven’t officially ruled out his wife, but she’s not a suspect.”
    Wells looked at the smiling man in the photograph and wondered if he was dead. “Let me make sure I have it straight. Callar, the doctor, hangs herself in San Diego. The two Rangers die. Nothing happens for a while. Then Karp dies here. Then Williams disappears in New Orleans.”
    “Correct,” Duto said.
    “Five missing or dead from a ten-person squad, nobody put it together?”
    “Why would we? A suicide, an IED in Afghanistan, a robbery, a missing person. Four army, one agency. Hard to see a pattern. Until this.”
    Duto slid two more sets of photographs across the table.
    “Jack Fisher and Mike Wyly. Both killed two days ago. Fisher in San Francisco in the morning. Wyly in Los Angeles near midnight. Both shot at close range. No witnesses, and even though they were in residential areas, none of the neighbors heard shots. The cops are assuming a silencer.”
    Duto didn’t need to explain further. Silencers were illegal, and good ones were hard to come by. A