“Satellite recon, as with Mr. Gold’s operation in Israel, would seem in order,” said Nick. “Unfortunately, the United States is a lot bigger than southern Syria, so we can’t just send the drones and satellites out. Can you put together for me a profile of what he’d need? Then we can task a recon satellite to look for it. Or maybe we have computer programs that can do such a thing.”

“Yep.”

“I’m going to hook you up with a Cyber Division hotshot we have named Jeff Neill. Lots of big-case experience. Maybe if you tell him what you need, he’ll be able to put something together that could facilitate finding it fast.”

“Now we’re perking,” said Swagger.

“Chandler?”

“Well, we’re not all drones and boy-genius hackers. Manhunt principles: flood the world with photos of quarry, run commo intercepts on likely allies, find a track, then raid. That’s how they’ve done it since Rome, and it’s worked before.”

“Sure, I agree, bu—”

Her phone rang.

“Detroit Metro, Homicide,” she said, looking at the dial.

“Take it,” said Nick.

•   •   •

The crime scene was indeed a crime scene: standard urban tragedy, case number 1,708,887. Bodies, blood in lakes and tributaries, the shooter’s progress written in the trail of shotgun shells he left as he took out all living things that crossed his path. Style points for the guy with the stick in his eye—the cops had never seen that and thought it was pretty funny—and the poor woman, so pulped her face looked like it had been taken over by malignancy. That, under the mashed and merged features, she still breathed lowered the score a bit, but a special bonus had to be awarded for the twisted false teeth in the blood.

“You’ve seen this shit before?” Nick asked the boss detective. “What are you getting?”

“Out-of-towners. No Detroit crew would hit this house. It’s a Black Pagans franchise, and the Pagans are the biggest, toughest gang in the city. They’ve got about eighty percent of the hard trade. Hard being Motownese for heroin. So if you hit them, they will go medieval on your ass and wipe out all the living generations of your family. If your parents are dead, they’ll dig them up and kill them all over again. Whoever did this didn’t give a shit about the Pagans.”

“What do you make of the shooting?” Bob asked the detective.

“It got the job done.”

“No, I mean as skill.”