Armageddon Conspiracy bl-1

by John Thompson

  Maggie met him on the Turner’s front porch. “Any problems?” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “Ready?” He waited for her nod then knocked on the door.

  A few seconds later, they heard heavy footsteps. “Yes?” a familiar voice asked.

  Brent nodded to Maggie. “Reverend Turner?” she said. “This is Special Officer Margaret DeVito with Project Seahawk. I wonder if I could have a word with you on a matter of national importance?”

  “Uh,” the Reverend’s voice came back, suddenly ragged with anxiety. “Well, I don’t know. It’s very late. Could you come back in the morning?”

  “I’m afraid not. It concerns the death of two local sheriff’s deputies and several murders in New York City. I am sure you can appreciate the need for your immediate cooperation.”

  “Uh… just a minute.” Brent heard the hiss of hurried whispers and words that sounded like, “Call Mr. Wofford.” A second later a woman’s voice came back, “It doesn’t work.” More whispers followed, something about a cell phone and the van, the rest indistinct.

  “Reverend, I have to ask you to open up right away. This will only take a few minutes.” As Maggie spoke Brent jumped off the porch and raced toward the rear of the house, drawing the pistol from his waistband. As he came around the side, he saw light spilling through the open backdoor and a woman on the porch, wearing a bathrobe. Something about her seemed oddly familiar.

  “Mrs. Turner!” he shouted.

  She swung her head toward him so that the light caught her face. His breath caught as he recognized Ruth Simmons. Panic etched her features as she turned, ran into the house, and slammed the door. A second later, Reverend Turner called out through the closed kitchen door. “You can’t just come barging in our house like this! It’s the middle of the night! We have rights!”

  Brent stepped onto the back porch and rattled the doorknob. He heard a sound like someone choking, and then footsteps. Thirty seconds went by. He fought the urge to check on Maggie. “Open up!” he called, and then used the pistol barrel to break a glass pane in the door.

  As he reached through and flicked the lock, a shotgun blast came from another part of the house. Thinking only of Maggie, he threw open the door and raced inside. He ran through the kitchen, small dining room, and living room, but the downstairs was empty. “Maggie!” he shouted.

  “Out here!”

  He ripped open the front door and saw her, gun drawn, down in a shooter’s crouch. “You okay?” he shouted.

  Before she could answer, there was another shot followed by a hollow thump. Brent jumped back and aimed up the stairs.

  “Reverend Turner, Mrs. Turner,” Maggie shouted. “Throw down your weapons and come to the top of the stairs with your hands up.”

  Brent held his breath. Seconds passed. The same dog still barked. Had the neighbors heard the shots?

  “Reverend Turner!” Maggie called again. “Come down stairs with your hands in the air.”

  Silence.

  “Reverend Turner,” Maggie called. “I’m going to count to ten.”

  She began to count. When she finished, Brent put his foot on the first step. “I’m coming up,” he shouted.

  He crept up the narrow staircase, his gun gripped in both hands, finger brushing the trigger. He paused, listened, and then shoved his fear into the background.

  Harry’s voice was right there with him, as though the two of them were climbing the stairs together. Life’s best when you’re on the edge, bro!

  Brent shook his head. Harry had his head up his ass.

  At the top of the stairs, his pulse slammed his eardrums. Otherwise, there was a deathly stillness. A strong metallic odor came from an open door on the right.

  He risked a peek around the corner, half-expecting a shotgun blast in the face. Instead he saw the bodies and the blood. “Oh my God,” he choked, as he sagged against the wall.

  “What?” Maggie called.

  He shook his head, unable to describe the sight—Reverend Turner in the middle of the floor, most of his jaw missing, a double-barreled shotgun inches from his outstretched hand, Ruth Simmons, or more likely Turner’s wife, sprawled across the bed. Blood and brains splattered the far wall.

  “Oh Jesus,” Maggie said as she came up and looked inside. Brent watched her double over and take several breaths, then quickly open the other two doors on the landing and sweep the empty rooms with her gun.

  He crushed the heels of his hands against his temples. “Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?”

  Maggie ignored him and went back in the bedroom. She was all business as she pulled a pair of rubber gloves from her pocket, slipped them on, and pointed at the woman. “There’s something here,” she said.

  Brent didn’t move. After a second Maggie looked back at him.

  He pointed. “That was Ruth Simmons.”

  “The Justice Department lawyer?”

  He nodded.

  “Well hurry up. We don’t have much time.”

  Brent held his breath and rolled the nearly headless body so Maggie could pull out what she’d seen.

  “Family Bible,” she said. “Opened to the Twenty-Third Psalm. She must have been reading it when he shot her.”

  “’The Lord is my shepherd.’ It’s like they were prepared for this,” Brent said. He shook his head in disbelief.

  Maggie began opening drawers and searching the dresser. She found a thin pair of men’s socks and tossed them to him. “Put them on so you don’t leave prints,” she said. “Check the other rooms.”

  Brent glanced in the bathroom then searched a guest bedroom. A cluttered desk stood by the window, and he flipped through piles of magazine articles, partly finished sermons, and stacks of correspondence. He took the letters with return addresses outside Lambertville and a black address book he found on top of the stack of sermons.

  “Time to go,” Maggie said from the door. Brent checked his watch, twelve forty-five. It hadn’t even been five minutes since the first shot, but if neighbors had heard it, the police could arrive any moment.

  He hurriedly jerked open the desk drawers and rummaged through the cheap two-drawer metal filing cabinet that sat beside the desk but found only manila folders with tax records and files of past sermons. He followed Maggie down the stairs and out the front door, where the cool night air shocked his lungs and the odors of grass and damp earth were like perfume. The neighboring houses remained completely dark.

  As they reached the car, he paused for a second to listen. The dog still barked, and somewhere far away a train sounded a single, lonely note.

  FORTY-SIX

  MORRISTOWN, NJ, JULY 1

  THEY’D DRIVEN THROUGH SPARSE LATE-NIGHT traffic all the way to Morristown before Maggie broke the silence. “I have something to tell you,” she said. “It’s been on my mind for a while, but it seemed too crazy like… a tangent or crazy extrapolation.”

  “Let me guess—you want to have sex with me?”

  She looked at him in utter amazement. Four people were dead tonight, and he was making jokes. “You really are a sick human being.”

  Brent shook his head. “Uncle Fred always said that humor is the only defense against the unspeakable.”

  “Imagine, a four syllable word coming from Uncle Fred.”

  “I thought you liked him.”

  “I do, but you’re all crazy, Brent. Everybody in your damn bloodline.”

  “I tried to explain that to you a long time ago.”

  “Well, try to get your brains out of my pants for five seconds, because I want to explain something.” She told him about the CIA’s alert and the seeming coincidence that the stolen money approximated the cost of the missiles and the nuclear material.

  Brent shot her an appraising glance. “That’s why you didn’t want me to turn myself in.”

  She nodded, “But I don’t have the slightest clue how to prove it.”

  “Biddle is the key,” Brent said. “We have to get to him and mak
e the bastard talk.”

  “Kidnapping,” she said with a nod. “Once again, the sophisticated approach.”

  “I can’t afford to sit around with my thumb up my ass.”

  “Spoken like a true male.”

  “What the hell would you do?”

  “Get evidence.”

  “Spoken like a true cop.”

  • • •

  A short time later, she walked into her house, tossed her keys on the table, and filled two glasses with ice. Exhaustion and stress had put her beyond the reach of caffeine. Cold water was a last resort.

  Brent followed her and collapsed in one of the kitchen chairs, resting his head on his arms.

  “Don’t fall asleep,” Maggie said. “We have to go through the address book.”

  “I’m just resting my eyes,” he said.

  “Like you were on the road,” she said, a reference to when he’d dozed and almost run off the soft shoulder.

  “Exactly like that.” He yawned, shooting his arms across the table so that he sent his cell phone crashing to the floor.

  Maggie bent down to pick up the phone and saw that the back had come off. As she started to put the two pieces back together, she noticed a small chip that had come loose and hung by two thin wires with tiny clips. She put the phone on the table and pointed. “Does that look like it belongs there?”

  Brent stared at the chip and then tried unsuccessfully to push it back into the rest of the tightly packed innards so that it fit. “Give me your phone,” he said after a second. She handed it over, and he removed the back. Together they looked at its symmetrically fitted guts. “I wondered about this the other night, but I was in too much of a panic to focus.”

  He turned his phone on then pulled a scrap of paper from his wallet. He dialed the scrawled phone number, pressed send and listened. “No answer,” he said. He picked up Maggie’s cell phone, dialed the same number, and held it out so she could hear. After several rings she heard a voice say, “FBI.”

  He hung up then stared again at the small chip that dangled from his phone. “I bet this redirected my calls.”

  “It probably also tracked you,” Maggie said.

  “I bet all my phones were fixed. My office would have been easy, and my apartment…” He glanced up at her then away.

  Something in his eyes told her that whatever happened in his apartment had involved another woman. She felt a sudden hot flash of jealousy. To cover it, she stood and went to the sink.

  Brent gripped the chip in his fingers ready to pull it out. “We have to assume they can still track us.”

  “Don’t!” she said. “There’s a better way.” She told him she’d be right back then took the cell phone outside, climbed in her car and drove six blocks to Joe Spedowski’s house. It was three a.m., but Spud was recently divorced and lived alone. She went up on his porch and rang the buzzer. He jerked it open a moment later wearing threadbare pajama bottoms and scratching his hairy stomach. “DeVito!” he grumbled. “This better be good.”

  “I need a favor.” She handed him the cell phone, said she needed him to keep it with him on his rounds.

  “Lemme guess,” he said, as he turned it over and eyed the dangling chip. “It’s bugged.”

  “I think it’s a tracking device.”

  “If I should run into the trackee?”

  “Wear your body armor. Call for backup.”

  His eyes opened wide. “You gonna give me any more information?”

  “Can’t.”

  “You owe me one.”

  “I owe you more than one.”

  He scowled, closed the door, and she got back in her car. A few minutes later when she walked back into her kitchen, Brent was going through the entries in Reverend Turner’s address book. He pointed to one under the letter G—the initials GA and a number with a 212 area code. “Fred Wofford’s direct line at Genesis Advisors!” he said triumphantly.

  Maggie came up behind him and rested her hands on his shoulders. She let them remain there. It felt selfish, almost wrong, but his muscle and bone felt so substantial and reassuring beneath her fingers. Suddenly, all the things that had pushed them apart seemed insignificant. “Come on,” she said, making her decision.

  “Where to now?” Brent asked.

  “Upstairs to bed. We need sleep.”

  He looked up at her and raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t think I was allowed.”

  “I think you’re pretty harmless tonight.”

  He managed a curious smile. “If I’m not?”

  “Well… either way you’re at least going to hold me until the damn alarm goes off.”

  He stood and put his arms around her. Neither of them spoke, and she folded her head into his chest and listened to the insistent thumping of his heart. They stood like that a long time. In spite of the night’s horrors, Maggie felt courage and strength begin to seep back into her bones, as though a rundown battery had suddenly been plugged into its charger.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  PROJECT SEAHAWK, NEWARK, NJ, JULY 1

  ANN JENKINS SAT WITH HER arms folded, her fingernails tucked out of biting range beneath her armpits, as she glared at the papers arrayed in neat piles on her desk. She’d been sitting this way for the past hour and a half, struggling to ignore the fraying tempers and the exhausted faces of people working double and triple shifts, trying to understand what was happening.

  She sat there in perfect stillness, back straight, trying to open her mind. Screw it, she decided after a few more minutes as she stood and started pacing. Nobody had invented the mantra that could take the place of a strong cigarette or at least a Hershey Bar with Almonds.

  Of course—her typical luck—the candy machine downstairs was on the blink. At two a.m. nothing was open beside an all-night place about four blocks away, and she’d need an Uzi to shoot her way through the zombies on Newark’s streets at this hour of the morning. Since she didn’t have time to waste filling out paperwork on the resulting body count, she was staying put.

  She stuck a finger in her mouth and tried to chew a piece of nail, but no luck, not even a sliver left to bite. She gave up and focused her eyes again on the pile topped by the CIA memo. Beneath it was everything she’d been able to dig up on the Wahaddi Brotherhood, which considering the CIA’s extremely negative view of the organization, wasn’t much. What she had, however, detailed the gradual choking off of the Brotherhood’s bank accounts in the years following 9/11, and also conveyed the strong suspicion that a major Saudi family with strong U.S. economic and political ties—name deleted—had been responsible for much or most of the funding.

  The second pile, not really a pile but a single sheet of paper, contained the names of all the people she’d spoken with over the past day and a half as she tried to drum up support for DeVito’s thesis. She’d been rebuffed by her old compatriots at the FBI, by her superiors in Homeland Security and the U.S. Attorneys Office, by the White House staff, by members of the Committee to Re-elect the President, by the New York Mayor’s Office and the New York Chief of Police, as well as by the Boston and Charleston commands of Project Seahawk. Her barrage of phone calls had finally brought a harsh response from her superiors at Homeland Security, and now she was expressly forbidden to communicate her Condition Red to anyone else.

  The third pile, and the one that troubled her most, consisted of several news items: the theft of over eight hundred million dollars a few days earlier, the murder of a wealthy Egyptian, an arson/murder in Rye, and a murder in a Manhattan parking garage. Underneath the clippings lay Maggie DeVito’s memo.

  It was damn creative detective work, Jenkins thought, but her requests for wiretaps and surveillance had been turned down. The connections were too tenuous—pure speculation someone at the U.S. Attorney’s Office called them—and Biddle was too powerful. Still, Jenkins respected the way DeVito had followed her gut. All her instincts told her that DeVito was on the right path.

  Unfortunately, it led straight into a political mine
field. Anybody who went that way risked getting blown to pieces. She shook her head, continued pacing, and tried to bite another nail.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  LAMBERTVILLE, NJ, JULY 1

  MOHAMMED CIRCLED THE SMALL HOUSE for the third time and listened to the sounds of the night all around. A dog barked in a yard somewhere. Once, a car sped past, not slowing. Mohammed’s own car was parked over a mile away, and he moved silently and carefully. The faint sound of a television leaked through the walls, as if someone was still watching, but he didn’t think they were. Maybe they’d fallen asleep, but he doubted that, too. Something felt wrong.

  He’d noticed the broken pane in the back door on his first circuit, and he’d gone around twice more to make sure he wasn’t missing anything else. Now, he went up onto the back porch and tried the knob. The door was unlocked. His Marakov 9mm was already in his hand, and he stepped over the broken glass and tiptoed through the kitchen.

  The downstairs was empty, and he crept up the stairs, his pistol centered on the landing. At the next to last step, the smell hit him, and he glanced to the right and saw the two sprawled bodies. He looked quickly at the other two rooms, found only emptiness, and then backtracked and left the house through the back door. On his way to his car he used his cell phone to call Abu Sayeed.

  “The holy man and his wife are dead,” he said.

  Abu Sayeed said nothing for several seconds, finally, “What about the other one?”

  “I have him.”

  “Come back.”

  “What about the bodyguards?”

  “They’ll come with Biddle.”

  FORTY-NINE

  TEETERBORO AIRPORT, JULY 1

  ANNELIËS TOOK A SERIES OF deep breaths to calm her nerves as Biddle’s Gulfstream touched down on the far end of the runway. The jet reversed thrusters and then a few seconds later braked just short of where she waited with the car.

  The engines wound down. A door swung back, a metal ladder unfolded, and Biddle hurried off the aircraft wearing wrinkled khakis and a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow. He stopped just short of the Range Rover and cast a searching look for his two bodyguards. He continued to glance around while the co-pilot loaded his luggage in the Range Rover’s cargo compartment. Finally, he thanked the pilot for a safe journey then climbed in the car. He gave Anneliës a curt nod, and she started through the gate that led to the airport exit road.