"Kerrin Graham and his wife Dana Graham, were last seen in Washington D.C.. Police are urging extreme caution in approaching the husband, who is considered to be dangerous, and have warned that although the woman is disabled and is restricted to the use of a wheelchair, they should not attempt to apprehend Dana Graham on their own. Anyone who has any information on either of the suspects should contact the following numbers as soon as possible…"
Kerrin was stunned. Instantaneously his heart rate shot up to a hundred and twenty beats a minute, and he felt dizzy.
His first reaction was to check the false beard on his chin, and fumble with the wig on his head to make sure it was still firmly in place. Lowering his head, he picked up the pair of brown spectacles, which he had taken off and dropped on to the table, and thrust them back firmly onto the bridge of his nose.
He looked around the bar, half expecting everyone to be staring at him. No one was.
The newscaster had moved on to talking about the latest baseball scores, and no one at the bar seemed to be interested in what she was saying. One of them got up to go to the toilet, and another waved at the barman, threw a ten dollar bill onto the bar and walked out.
Kerrin's hands had started to shake again.
What was happening?
What was he going to do now?
First Fiona, and now this…
Kerrin could feel the walls of the bar closing in on him. For the first time in his life he felt small, and weak. Hunted. It was only a matter of time now…
And then he thought of Dana…He had to get back to Dana!
Chapter 35
Sunshine Villas
Cherry Hill, New Jersey
Mrs Wanamaker, the wife of the owner of Sunshine Villas, was just finishing a late lunch in the room behind the reception desk. It had been a busy morning. One couple had tried to sneak off without paying, the cleaning company had been late in delivering yesterday's laundry, and there had been a late rush of bookings, with people trying to track down last minute accommodation for the big Travel Convention that was happening somewhere in town. If it wasn't one thing, it was another.
She picked up the remote, and flicked through the channels looking for something more interesting to watch. As she flicked onto the local news channel, she caught the tail end of a story on the upcoming Travel Convention and laughed when the newsreader mentioned how well planned it had been this year.
"If it's so well planned, why is everyone struggling to find anywhere to stay…Idiots!" she muttered to herself.
Before she had a chance to flick to the next channel, two photographs flashed onto the screen, and the newsreader started talking about two of the latest terrorist suspects the government was looking for.
Mrs Wanamaker leant forward in her chair, turned up the volume on the remote and stared intently at the TV screen…
There was something very familiar about the people in the photographs…Something very familiar indeed!
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The drive from Washington back to Cherry Hill New Jersey took over three hours and Kerrin was revved up the whole way. Each time a car came into sight in his rear-view mirror, he panicked that he was being tailed. Several times he nipped in and out of the traffic, trying to shake off cars or vans that looked just a little bit too suspicious for his liking, only to find that they blended into the other traffic easily, and made no attempt to keep up or overtake him.
The sweat was running off his forehead and the wig and the beard had begun to itch terribly. As soon as he reached the freeway he ripped them off and stuffed them into the plastic bag on the seat beside him, along with the ridiculous glasses that kept slipping off his nose.
A woman pulled in front of him from the inside lane and Kerrin swore loudly, smashing the palm of his hand onto the steering wheel horn. He looked over his shoulder and accelerated past her in the fast lane.
Sunshine Villas was set back from the main road running through Cherry Hill. The bulk of the motel rooms were accommodated in two buildings, each set out on two levels with balconies overlooking a swimming pool shared among all the rooms. The motel reception was at the front and to the side of one of the buildings, on the edge of a large paved parking area which ran along in front of the two buildings and the pool.
As Kerrin drove along the street towards the motel, he could see blue flashing lights from several blocks away. Stopping at the traffic lights one block away, his heart sank as he saw several policemen standing on the road outside Sunshine Villas waving the traffic on and past the entrance to the motel.
Suddenly a helicopter swept over the street, hovering above the motel complex. The State Troopers on the road ducked involuntarily, reaching up with a free hand to keep their hats from blowing off.
The lights changed to green.
Caught up in the flow of traffic and with no choice but to follow the policemen's instructions, Kerrin changed into the middle lane and continued driving past the motel, glancing sideways and trying to see what was happening .
Half a dozen police cars stood in the parking lot, forming a ring around the room at the bottom end of the large building on the left of the pool. State troopers and policemen stood behind the doors of their police cars, resting rifles and pistols on the roofs of their cars and pointing towards the open door of Room 302.
Kerrin's room.
Then, as he looked over his right shoulder, he saw two women police officers wheeling Dana in her wheelchair out from the room towards a police van parked by the edge of the pool. A wave of despair swept over Kerrin, and he screamed loudly at the top of his voice, slamming his fist into the dashboard and drawing blood across his knuckles.
Dana! He was too late…they had got Dana!
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As Kerrin drove past the entrance to Sunshine Villas he was so shocked at the sight of Dana being whisked away from their motel room, that he failed to notice the two cameras sitting on top of large metal tripods on either side of the road, each camera carefully aligned at just the right height so that while one could see in through the front window and scan the faces of the driver and front passenger, the other recorded the registration plates of the passing vehicle.
The latest toy of the Pennsylvanian Police Department, the Automatic Digital Face Recognition System was capable of seeing into the cabs of moving cars, recording the faces of its occupants, digitising the images and comparing them instantly with all police and state records of known criminals or suspects wanted for questioning by the police.
The system was not cheap, but in the new war on terror since 9/11, it had proved an invaluable aid for tracking down suspected terrorists and dangerous individuals who posed a threat to society. Linked by satellite to the George computer in Alabama, each street unit could process two hundred pictures a minute, and within four minutes provide a readout to a laptop computer located near the position of the cameras, in this case controlled by a state trooper sitting in a car only feet from the camera.
As Kerrin's car passed by the motel, he was not aware that his face had been digitised and processed and that even before he had driven more than two blocks from the motel, a young captain in a state police car had been alerted to his presence and was just about to raise the alarm on his radio.
--------------------
As soon as Kerrin passed the motel, he reached into his hold-all on the seat beside him and pulled out the old police radio. He had bought it several years ago from one of the many dubious contacts he had met over the past five years. It was a reminder of his days on the force, and he liked to listen to what the police were saying to each other when driving around the city. Sometimes when he was working on a news story, he used it to keep tabs on what was going on, and it helped him to stay hot on the heels of the latest developments.
He switched it on and tuned it into the local police frequency, hoping to pick up some bulletins and radio discussion on what was happening. Hopefully he would be able to find out where they wer
e taking Dana, and what was happening to her.
There were normally about three different radio bands that the State police would broadcast on. Kerrin listened to each of them in turn but although he heard lots of calls going back and forward between the various stations and their men out on patrol, none of them seemed to be dealing with the incident at Sunshine Villas. It was peculiar. Almost as if the police were not aware of what was going on…but if they weren't the State police that had just arrested Dana, who were they?
A flashing light reflected in his wing mirror caught his attention.
A glance in his rear view mirror showed that several police cars were coming towards him, making their way through the traffic behind.
"Are they chasing me, or just leaving the scene of the incident?" he thought to himself.
He pulled over quickly into one of the side streets and put his foot down. His car accelerated quickly towards the other end, but as he waited to turn right onto the main road ahead, he caught sight of one of the police cars swerving into the street behind him.
"Shit, they're tailing me." Kerrin swore under his breath.
Suddenly all thoughts of Dana were pushed out of his head and he had become the hunted again. He knew that he had to escape, at all costs. Both Dana's and Fiona's lives depended upon him evading capture, staying alive and finding out what was going on. How they had spotted him he didn't know, but he didn't have time to worry about that now. He had to escape.
A second police car appeared in the street behind him, joining the other one already heading towards him. The traffic on the main road in front was heavy and Kerrin realised he didn't have the time to wait patiently for a gap to open up and let him into the traffic. Without hesitating, Kerrin gunned the accelerator and shot into the moving traffic in front. There was the loud screeching of brakes and blaring horns as several cars came to a rapid halt on his left, the cars behind them trying furiously to avoid colliding with the now stationary cars in front of them.
Kerrin swerved onto the other side of the road, nearly colliding with a car coming directly at him, but missing the collision at the last moment by swerving across the front of the oncoming traffic and disappearing down another side street on the left.
Behind him he could hear the large crash of several cars ramming into each other, and the sound of a horn hooting protest at his shoddy driving skills.
At the end of the road, he accelerated across the junction without slowing down, praying that he would not be rammed by any cars coming from his right or left.
Luckily, he made the junction okay, and was soon hurtling down the next street unharmed.
From memory Kerrin was hoping that turning right at the next road would take him onto the freeway, and then out of the city. Using all his skill, his rental car rocketed out of the side street and swerved onto the main road ahead. This time he was not so lucky, and he clipped the back of a car as he emerged from the junction, sending the other car spinning across the street and into the path of the oncoming traffic. There was a loud crash, followed quickly by an explosion as a gas tank ruptured.
In his rear view mirror he could see the smoke and fire billowing upwards from the ruined cars, and he realised with horror that it was unlikely that anyone had survived the impact.
"Shit…" Kerrin swore loudly, fighting to maintain control of the wheel and forcing himself to concentrate on his driving and not dwell on the crash he had just caused.
Suddenly, from out of the cloud of smoke engulfing the road behind him, Kerrin caught sight of one of the police cars charging after him.
The sign for the ramp for the Freeway flashed by him, and Kerrin changed lanes, narrowly missing a large van carrying pressurised gas cylinders.
The police car behind him was gaining ground. Powered by a highly tuned engine and driven by a more experienced driver, it was making easy work of weaving in and out of the traffic and catching Kerrin up.
Accelerating as fast as he could, Kerrin drove onto the long upward ramp leading to the Freeway, just as he heard the first gun shot.
With alarm he realised that his pursuers were firing at him.
Keeping a firm hold of the steering wheel with one hand, he reached into his shoulder holster and touched his Beretta reassuringly…
Phaanngg! Suddenly the back window disintegrated behind him, and a spray of broken cubed glass covered Kerrin's head. Before a second bullet could get him through the open back window, Kerrin swerved the car hard over to the left.
The car behind him was closer now, and in his rear-view mirror he could make out the shape of one of the pursuers leaning out of an open window, firing at him.
Phaannng! Another shot, and the car lurched sharply to the right.
A bullet had blown out one of the rear tyres. Kerrin fought furiously to control the car, but succeeded only in missing a collision with a large RV on the inside lane, before his car swept over the edge of the ramp, through the protective wall and down the sloping grassy bank on the other side.
Unable to control the skid, his car started to turn, at the same time bouncing into the air and spinning once in a complete sideways somersault, before thudding back into the grass bank and coming to a violent halt right-side-up.
Amazingly Kerrin was unhurt. The seat belt he had been wearing had miraculously protected him from any serious injury, but as the car rocked back and forward on its damaged suspension, Kerrin became immediately aware of the smell of leaking gasoline.
Reacting instantly, he flicked himself free of the seat-belt, grabbed the bag containing his disguise which had landed on his lap, and dived out of the side door. Without looking back, he staggered to his feet and started to run.
A large explosion and a blast of hot air caught him in the back, propelling him forward onto his face, and he fell, sprawling, onto the ground. A ball of flame from the exploding car swept over him, singeing his hair and scorching his clothes.
Coming quickly to his senses Kerrin staggered to his feet and started to run. In front of him he could see the entrance to a subway which passed underneath the ramp and the freeway and emerged somewhere on the other side.
He ran as fast as he could, taking the subway steps three at a time, then along the dark, dank, urine-stinking tunnel, until he emerged into the light at the other end onto a patch of open ground, covered in broken glass, rubbish and discarded supermarket trolleys. Jumping across an empty metal oil-drum lying in his path, he crossed the open ground quickly, and found himself running along a street, whose buildings were mostly boarded up and were obviously abandoned and in various stages of collapse. In some of the doorways, vagrants languished drunkenly, a few of them looking up to watch him as he passed.
He ran without looking back, expecting at any moment to hear the sound of pursuing gunshots or a roaring car engine chasing after him, but there was none. Not stopping to wonder why he wasn't being followed, he realised that he must be heading towards the railway line. If he was correct, he would be close to one of the commuting stops for the local trains.
Almost at the end of his strength, he crossed a couple of side streets, eventually coming out in front of the entrance to a station. He staggered inside, only able to take the steps one at a time, before just managing to summon up the strength to jump over the ticket barrier at the top of the stairs.
He came to a stop at the edge of the tracks, bending forwards and resting his hands on his knees as he gasped for air and tried to regain control of his breathing. As his head began to clear, the tracks in front of him began to sing, a high pitch whine which was soon swamped by the loud rumbling of an approaching commuter train rushing towards the platform.
The train came to a halt, and Kerrin jumped aboard, clinging to a pole and swaying unsteadily on his feet as they accelerated out of the station. His eyes swept the station on both sides, trying to catch sight of any pursuers, but there were none. The platform behind him was empty.
It didn't occur to him until later that evening, when he was safely
inside a dingy motel room on the other side of town, that those who had been pursuing him had probably wrongly assumed he had been killed in the exploding car.
For now at least he had evaded capture one more time, but he knew his luck couldn't hold out much longer.
He was just one man against an unseen army, an enemy with the backing of what seemed like the entire security forces of the United States.
And yet, in spite of everything, Kerrin refused to give up hope.
He had a gut feeling that things were about to change, and that for once, things were about to start going his way.
Chapter 36
Day Twenty-Three
Old Creek Farm
Delaware
8 a.m. E.S.T.
Doctor Smiles opened his bag, and took out the tools of his trade, lying them in an exact order upon the clean, white, cloth that he had just spread upon the top of the metal trolley.
He like things to be ordered. He found that being meticulous in all things produced better results. It was more professional.
He liked white.
White was one of his trademarks.
He took it as a matter of personal failure if blood was spilled, little drops of red polluting the cleanliness he strived to maintain.
Blood was unnecessary. Totally unnecessary. He looked down upon his colleagues who were forced to resort to more brutal methods of information extraction. They had no skill. They were amateurs.
Why did people insist that interrogation had to be brutal?
If God had meant interrogators to use force, why had He given them modern drugs and so many effective methods of hypnosis?
Interrogation was just a matter of asking the right questions in the right way. It had always been his experience, that if you used the right words, that in general, people would be happy to tell you what they knew. All you had to do was make sure that they were relaxed, and to encourage them a little to want to share their knowledge with you. It was so simple really.
The Orlando File Omnibus : (Omnibus Version-Book 1 & Book 2) Page 30