by Stuart Woods
“You know,” Ham said, “it’s not inconceivable that they would install a new cell on that road, since it connects I-95 with the Florida Turnpike.”
“Maybe,” John said.
“I expect one of these days soon they’ll have every square mile of the country covered,” Peck added. He turned to Ham. “You shooting today?”
“I thought I might take the rifle down to the lakeshore and practice firing back toward the woods to the west. There’s a breeze today, and I’d like to see how it shoots with windage.”
“Good idea. I’m tied up this morning, but I’ll send somebody with you.”
“I don’t need any help,” Ham said. “I don’t even need any targets. I’ll shoot at trees.”
“Okay,” Peck said, digging in a pocket and coming up with some keys. “Take the jeep.” He turned to John. “I’ve got a class to teach. I’ll see you later.”
“Right,” John said, and he seemed preoccupied.
When Peck had left the table and Ham was alone with John, he lowered his voice. “John, about the cell phone business.”
“Yes?”
“My assumption is that you’re worried about somebody reporting our plans for Monday.”
“That’s right.”
“I assume you’ve kept that information close, the way you do everything.”
“You’re right about that.”
“I mean, I don’t know the details. Does anybody besides you and Peck know what’s going down?”
“No.”
“I just wondered,” Ham said. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some shooting to do.” He left John sitting alone at the table. That’ll give him something to think about, Ham thought. He went to the armory in the cellar, drew the Barrett’s rifle and some ammunition, got the jeep and drove down to the lakeshore. It was Friday; three days to go.
Harry bent and looked over Eddie’s shoulder at the computer screen. “Have you come up with anything?”
Eddie shook his head. “Monday’s a real quiet day,” he said. “No sports events, nothing at all that would draw an important visitor. I mean, there’s a convention of furniture dealers in Miami, and a literary festival in Key West, but it’s not like the president—or anybody else important—is attending either of them. There’s a citrus grower’s meeting on Tuesday, and God knows, there’s always something going on at Disney World, but we’re looking for a prominent target, aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Can you check with the Secret Service and see if the president is planning some unannounced visit on Monday, something that isn’t on his published schedule?”
“I’ll take care of it,” Harry said, then he jumped.
“What’s the matter?”
Harry was clawing at his belt. “My phone just goosed me.” He snapped it open. “Yeah?”
“It’s me,” Ham said. “This thing is working, huh?”
“Are you scrambled?”
“Yes. And a good thing, too, because they’re monitoring cell phone use with a scanner twenty-four hours a day. Did you do something to jump up the reception out here?”
“Yes, we installed a portable cell. I take it John noticed.”
“Right.”
“Where are you now?”
“I’m out by the lake. Hang on a second.”
Harry listened, and suddenly, the phone seemed to explode in his ear. “Ham?”
“Yeah? Sorry about that; I’m supposed to be practicing shooting.”
“Is it safe for you to talk?”
“Yeah, but let’s make it quick. I don’t have any more information about what they’re planning, just that it’s on Monday, and it’s two or three men in a limo.”
“We got that over the smoke detector,” Harry said.
“I’ll call you back if I get any more information. Tell Holly I’m okay.” Ham broke the connection.
Harry snapped his phone shut. “Ham got the phone. Thank God for that.”
“Anything new?”
“Nothing. I’d better call the White House.”
Ham sat cross-legged, the Barrett’s rifle resting on a tripod attached to the gun’s barrel. He unplugged the earphone, wound up the cord and stuffed it into a shirt pocket. He dropped the tiny phone in, too. It hardly made a bulge in the baggy fatigue shirt pocket.
He watched the movement of the trees, made a guess about the wind and fired again. He hit a tree, but not the one he was aiming for.
Fifty-three
HAM FINISHED FIRING FOR THE MORNING. HE stowed the rifle in the rear of the jeep and was about to get in when he saw a roll of duct tape on the floor of the rear seat, and it gave him an idea.
He lay down on his back in the footwell of the driver’s seat and looked under the dash. Satisfied, he tore off a strip of the duct tape, stuck the phone and the three batteries to it, and taped them to the underside of the dash, satisfied that even hard bumps wouldn’t dislodge them. Feeling better, he drove back to Peck’s house for lunch.
Harry knew the head of the White House Secret Service detail, so he cut some red tape and called him directly. He got a voice mail tape and left a message. Five minutes later, his phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Harry, that you?”
“Chip, how are you, boy?”
“I can’t complain, except they’re working my ass off. I’m traveling just about all the time. Good thing I’m already divorced.”
Harry laughed.
“I heard you got the Miami job. That right?” Chip asked.
“It’s right, and I’m away from home right now, too.”
“Where?”
“Little town called Orchid Beach, in a rented beach house.”
“Sounds like tough duty. What’s up?”
“I got a question for you. Is the president going to be in Florida next Monday?”
“Why? You want to take a shot at him?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“Well, Harry, I can tell you that the president has no official visits outside Washington planned for Monday.”
“What about unofficial visits? Anything that’s not on the published schedule?”
“What’s this about, Harry?”
“I just need to know. It’s something I’m working on.”
“It sounds like something the Secret Service should be working on,” Chip replied.
“Come on, Chip, you know I’d call you if I thought there was a credible threat.”
“Do I?”
“Sure you do. I’m not about to get my tit caught in that wringer.”
“Let me put it this way, Harry: if the president had an unofficial visit to Florida planned for Monday, I couldn’t tell you about it.”
“I understand, Chip, but you could tell me if he didn’t have an unofficial visit planned, couldn’t you?”
“That depends.”
“All right, Chip, what’s this going to cost me?”
“The best dinner at the best restaurant in Miami in the company of the best-looking single female FBI agent in your office, the next time I’m down there.”
“Oh, so now I’m pimping for you, huh?”
“You think of it any way you like, Harry. That’s my price.”
“All right, done. Now answer my question.”
“I will. If you’d bothered to check the White House Web site or read the published schedule, or even watch the evening news, then you’d know that the president is receiving the prime minister of Israel and the head of the PLO at the White House on Monday morning, and talks are scheduled for all day.”
“You miserable son of a bitch!”
“I’ll let you know when I’m going to be in Miami, Harry, probably on short notice. Bye, now.” Chip hung up.
Ham arrived back at Peck’s house for lunch, just as the meeting in Peck’s study was breaking up. Ham went to the john and washed his hands, and when he came out, John was waiting for him.
“Come with me, Ham,” he said.
Ham followed him to the cellar, down a hall and into a room equipped as some sort of workshop, where a man wearing a loupe attached to his eyeglasses was working on something, bending close over a workbench.
The man looked up. “Hey, John,” he said, “this our guy?”
“It is. Ham, meet Dave, the best document forger in the business. Dave also designs our private currency, which you’ve seen.”
Ham shook the man’s hand, and Dave didn’t let go immediately. He peered closely at Ham’s face. “Good tan,” he said. “I’d have preferred to provide that, myself.”
Ham had no idea what the man was talking about.
“Come on, Dave, just get it done.”
“Well, as I understand it, we don’t have time for surgery, so I’ll just have to wing it.”
“I always enjoy watching this,” John said.
“Let’s see, graying hair, but darker eyebrows. I think I’ll go for a darker mustache, but with some gray in it, and heavier eyebrows.” He went to his workbench, opened a large briefcase and began rummaging in it. “Here we go,” Dave said. “Stand here, under the light, Ham.”
Ham moved as he was directed to.
Dave picked up an eyebrow with a pair of tweezers, painted something on the back and glued it over Ham’s own right eyebrow, then he repeated the process with the left one. “Yeah, this is going to work,” he said. He went back to the briefcase and came back with a mustache that matched the eyebrows. After a moment, Ham was a different man.
Ham looked at himself in a mirror. “Damn,” he said. “Good-looking guy.”
“Let’s try these, too,” Dave said, picking up a pair of heavy, black-rimmed glasses. “You wear glasses, Ham?”
“Just for reading.”
“What magnification?”
“Two.”
“I can handle that,” Dave said, going to a different briefcase and fishing out a pair of lenses. He removed the original lenses and snapped in the new ones. “Nice pair of bifocals,” he said, putting the glasses on Ham. “Plain glass at the top, reading glasses at the bottom. How do they feel?”
“Loose,” Ham said.
Dave made some adjustments, then returned the glasses to Ham.
Ham put them on and looked in the mirror. He would not have recognized himself, he thought.
“How’s that, John?”
“Perfect, Dave.”
“Okay, Ham, let’s take a couple of pictures of you.” He opened a folding screen and stood Ham in front of it. “We got a nice passport-model Polaroid camera here, makes four prints simultaneously.” He took the picture, then handed Ham a shirt. “Put this on, and we’ll take another.”
Ham did as he was told, and his picture was taken again.
“This is all for your protection, Ham,” John said. “We don’t want anyone who gets a look at you to give an accurate description. We’ll get you a hat, too.” He began to look through a stack of hats on a table nearby.
“And a cigar is a good idea,” Dave said. “Distorts the face.”
“Hate ’em,” Ham said.
“We won’t bother with that,” John said, picking out a businesslike straw hat and placing it on Ham’s head. “Look, his own mother wouldn’t recognize him. You own a suit, Ham?”
“Yes, back at my place.”
“I’ll send somebody over there to pick it up for you. Let me have a key.”
Ham unhooked his house key from a ring and handed it to John.
“We’ll burn it after you wear it,” John said. “I’ll spring for a new one, though.”
“I’ve only got one, and I was thinking of burning it, anyway,” Ham said.
Everybody laughed.
Fifty-four
HOLLY WAS VISITING HARRY’S PLACE AFTER DINNER on Friday evening, when Eddie, who was listening to his smoke detector bug with a headset, whistled and flipped a switch. John’s voice came into the room, but there was some sort of static, too, and there were gaps in the transmission.
“May I have reservations, please,” he said. “Hello? My name . . . Owen. . . . I’d like to confirm a reservation I made recently. . . . nights, arriving tomorrow, departing Tuesday morning. No-smoking, that’s correct, and I’m on the beach side of the hotel? . . . floor will be fine. Yes, I understand there won’t be an ocean view, but I’ll be working too hard to enjoy it, anyway. . . . see you tomorrow.” He hung up, then he could be heard moving around the room, but he didn’t speak and no one entered the room.
“Damn, Eddie, can’t you do anything about that reception?”
“No, Harry, it’s somewhere between here and a satellite a few hundred miles up.”
Harry wrote down the name Owen. “I wonder if that’s his real name,” he said.
“I doubt it,” Doug replied. “The guy’s probably got a dozen or more aliases. I think Alton Charlesworth is as close as we’re going to get without prints. Even if we ran them, we’d find a CIA hold on the record.”
“You’re probably right,” Harry said.
Then there were two voices in the room. “Hey,” Peck’s voice said. “We all set on paperwork?”
“Dave’s working on it now. We took the photographs, and they look great. He’ll have everything ready before he goes to bed tonight. Has Ham turned in?”
“Yeah, he left a few minutes ago.”
“Does he still have the jeep?”
“No, I’ve got it.”
“Let me have the keys. I want to take a drive out to the strip and make sure the machine is ready.”
“I took care of the list you gave me,” Peck said.
John’s voice took on a new tone. “Peck, are you carrying your cell phone?”
“Yeah, sure. I always do.”
“Make any calls today?”
“No.”
“Let me have it, will you?”
“Sure, here. I’d like it back tomorrow.”
“I know you would, but I may need it more than you.”
“Whatever you say, John.” Peck sounded abashed.
“Good night.”
“Good night, John.”
The door could be heard to close, then a television came on.
“He’s listening to the Weather Channel,” Harry said. “The seven-day forecast. I wish we knew for sure which city, and especially, which hotel.”
“It’s near a beach,” Doug replied.
“Like half the hotels in Florida.”
Ham woke up the following morning to find himself alone. When he had returned to the bunkhouse the night before, his companions and their luggage had gone.
“Hello!” a voice called from outside.
“Yeah, hello!” Ham called back.
A young man Ham had never seen before came into the barracks carrying a cooler. “Breakfast,” he said.
“Breakfast in bed?”
“If that’s where you want it,” the young man replied. “It’s all there, what you usually have. John said to tell you you’re to stay here this morning, until he sends for you.”
“Something special about Saturday mornings?” Ham asked.
“Just the gun show. But you’re confined to barracks until further notice.” He smiled, waved and left.
Ham opened the cooler to find hot scrambled eggs and sausage, juice and a Thermos of coffee. He ate breakfast slowly, then showered and shaved and lay back down on his bunk in his shorts. He had nothing to read, no television to watch. He was bored. Then he noticed his blue suit hanging on a hook near the door. Someone must have put it there during the night, he thought. He decided to go back to sleep.
Harry was eating breakfast when Eddie waved at him and turned up the volume on the radio. Lake Winachobee was on the air again.
“Good morning,” John’s voice said. “This is November one, two, three, tango foxtrot. Would you please brief me for an IFR flight from Vero Beach to Miami, Opa-Locka, departing at seven p.m. local? I’ll go low, six thousand.” There was a wait as John listened to the forecast. “I’ll file,” he sa
id, finally. “IFR, November one, two, three, tango foxtrot; I’m a PA forty-six stroke golf, departing Vero Beach at seven p.m. local, at six thousand. My route of flight will be Palm Beach, direct; destination is Opa-Locka; time en route, one hour. I have two and one-half hours of fuel. My name is John Wills, based Vero Beach, my phone number is (561) 555- 0022. The airplane is white over gray; there will be four souls aboard. Under comments, note that I’ll take off VFR and pick up my clearance in the air. Thanks, goodbye.” He hung up and apparently left the room.
“You get all that?” Harry asked Doug, who was taking notes.
“Yep.”
“Get somebody at the FAA out of his backyard pool and check out the ownership of that airplane, then check out the local phone number and the name John Wills. We’re on the move.”
“Hang on,” Doug said, “the event isn’t scheduled until Monday, and we don’t know if Ham is going to be on that airplane.”
“We’ll find that out from a stakeout at Opa-Locka,” Harry said. “We’ll be following them wherever they go.” He got on the phone to his office and his deputy. “Mark, I want you to get the loan of one of the DEA’s tracking helicopters. I want the pilot to follow, but not interfere with, a light aircraft, a PA forty-six, whatever that is. I believe it’s going to take off from a grass strip west of Vero Beach, heading for Opa-Locka, Miami, and the pilot will probably pick up an IFR clearance in the air. Tell him to listen in on Miami Center and get the squawk code that the Center assigns the airplane; that will make it easier to track. Set up a radio link with the chopper, so that we’re in constant touch, and warn the pilot to be ready for the aircraft to suddenly change airports and go somewhere else. Above all, he is not to lose that airplane!”
“Got it,” Mark replied.
“Next, I want you to set up a multiple-vehicle surveillance team to meet that aircraft at Opa-Locka and follow the occupants wherever they go. There should be four aboard. They’re departing around seven o’clock local and should be landing in Opa-Locka an hour later, but you be ready two hours before that, and be prepared for a later landing.”