The Wrong Man (Complete 3-Book International Thriller Box Set)

by Fritz Galt

  From the open door of the Arch, the sound of small feet came pounding his way.

  “Stop, Larry!”

  Jeremy’s head rolled away against his crippled arm.

  Ferrar was a mere five yards behind the trailer truck, eager to beat it to the highway exit.

  Though the ramp was obscured from view by the truck, the exit sign was right above them. He pulled onto the shoulder to pass the truck.

  Then something strange happened. The truck swerved left at the last moment and didn’t take the ramp.

  Ferrar gritted his teeth as he slammed on his brakes and attempted to weave left.

  He couldn’t avoid the yellow crash barrels in his path. The last image he recorded in his mind was of the truck careening down the highway. He found himself hurtled forward against his seatbelt, and jerked toward the passenger’s seat.

  His neck snapped sideways and blackness ensued.

  A great deal of time may have passed. Or maybe none at all. Slowly, Ferrar began to focus on distant sounds, that of sirens approaching.

  Lifting his head was painful, but something deep inside him said it was necessary. He saw a line of squad cars on the far side of a mountain of crash barrels. His head-on collision had prevented them from entering the highway. His monster car had saved his life.

  But the truck!

  His car was facing down an empty highway, the towers of downtown St. Louis directly ahead of him. He blinked several times and tried to focus on the distance.

  There was a single, black dot on the road. It had to be Bolton’s truck.

  Oddly, the Lincoln’s motor was still running. His hand must have jabbed the car into neutral during the collision.

  “Sorry, boys,” he said, giving the cops a toss of the hand. He regretted it immediately. It was painful to move.

  Then he headed into the sunset after Tray Bolton.

  Chapter 21

  In the long, lingering dusk, Tray’s red and yellow taillights finally turned off Interstate 70. Following at a safe distance, Ferrar found himself on a truck route zigzagging through the hushed western edge of St. Louis.

  After the mess he had left behind, he figured that he had only one arrow left in his quiver—surprise.

  The truck prowled through the quiet, green communities as if sniffing out a place to stay for the night. Whenever it came to a traffic signal, Ferrar stopped one light behind.

  They passed several commercial streets with lighted storefronts, motel entrances and gas stations. But the truck continued on to some unknown destination.

  Then an illuminated blue street sign gave Ferrar the answer. They were approaching a cargo facility near the East Terminal of Lambert St. Louis International Airport.

  The truck finally came to rest under a pool of light at the cargo facility. The guard on duty waved Bolton through at once and directed him toward a set of warehouses to the right.

  Ferrar pulled up next and powered down his window. The scent of airplane exhaust was overpowering.

  He rubbed the sore spot in his neck. He was going to have to stay coherent a short while longer.

  “Boss’ car?”

  “Huh?” He looked stupid for a moment until it finally dawned on him how incongruous it must look for someone in mechanic’s overalls tooling around in a late model Lincoln Continental. “Yeah. I get the dirty work, but the wheels aren’t bad.”

  “What did you do, drive her into a brick wall?”

  He frowned. The whole front end must be mangled. “Came that way.”

  The guard nodded and blew out a lungful of air that turned to steam at once.

  “What you got today, buddy?” he asked.

  “Last minute drop-off for Federal Express,” Ferrar said.

  “Okay. That would be a left at the end of this block.”

  “Thanks much.” Ferrar threw him a two-fingered salute.

  Instead of following the man’s directions, he hung an abrupt right and followed Tray’s truck. He watched the guard in the rearview mirror as he turned the wrong way. The guard seemed mildly amused, but didn’t otherwise object.

  The container truck was parked behind a hangar. Ferrar pulled up to an office just around the corner.

  There, he remained in the car and watched. A forklift slipped its prongs under the container and gently plucked it off the flatbed. The forklift backed up beeping, turned and headed into the open hangar.

  It was time to move in.

  There was no need for disguise. His black growth of beard obscured half his face. His oil-stained overalls identified him as a dumpy mechanic.

  Even Bolton wouldn’t recognize him.

  Hoping to find a side entrance, Ferrar stepped out of the car and circled the hangar. There was no door, but the entire back of the building was open and a DC-7 cargo plane was just pulling out. Its four huge turboprop engines began roaring and its navigational lights began to flash.

  Ferrar dodged through the opening into the shadows of the hangar. He looked around inside. The place was strangely empty. The men from the truck were gone, presumably already aboard the plane with the container.

  He tried to make out the objects around him in greater detail. Nearest to him appeared to be stacks of books bundled in plastic and strapped to pallets.

  Deeper in the shadows, he made out a man leaning over a table. The blond hair and chiseled physique were familiar enough. It was Tray Bolton.

  Tray’s briefcase lay open on the table before him, and he was inserting a needle into his forearm, just below a rubber tube that pinched off the flow of blood. With a squeeze of his thumb, he injected several cc’s of a clear liquid into a vein.

  Ferrar’s feet bumped into a crowbar. It would make a good weapon. He picked it up.

  Behind him, the airplane taxied into the nighttime. He checked its wings, fuselage and tail for a company logo or insignia. Strangely, it was unmarked.

  “Hi, George,” a voice said in his ear.

  Ferrar spun around, ducking, and came up with the hooked claw of the crowbar slashing upward through the air. It caught a sheet of plastic from the pallet and tore a hole in it.

  Several books spilled out onto the floor. They were Bibles.

  Bolton began to laugh deeply, having stepped back to avoid the swing. His strong hands grabbed the end of the crowbar that was tangled in the plastic sheeting, and yanked it out of Ferrar’s grasp.

  Ferrar stood upright. He was furious, but unafraid. He gaped at Bolton’s lighthearted expression.

  “Bibles?” he muttered. Why did Bolton have Bibles?

  “Yes, the Holy Scripture,” Tray said. “Want a copy?” He tossed one toward Ferrar, who stepped back just in time and let it hit the floor. Who knew what kind of chemical agents it contained?

  “You look like you’ve got a few questions on your mind,” Bolton said.

  “And from that smug look on your face,” Ferrar said, “I’d say you have some answers.”

  “Try me.”

  Ferrar examined his former boyhood friend and competitor. They had both come a long way since Bar Harbor High School.

  “Okay, here goes,” Ferrar began. “For starters, how did you escape from Tora Bora?”

  “Ah, you’re still interested in tradecraft. There’s always an escape route in any such cave complex. I happened to have studied a map long before our assault team arrived. Didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t know there was such a map. So, you planned the ambush long before we got there.”

  Bolton bowed, but didn’t respond.

  “What happened to Deke Houston at Bar Harbor?”

  “He wasn’t dead enough when I got to him.”

  Ferrar hung his head as he remembered Tray emerging from the sinking ferry in Maine with a bloody knife.

  “Next question?”

  “How did you escape from the train wreck?”

  “Now think about it. Why would I have stayed on that train? The shipment was already offloaded onto the truck.”

  “But I h
eard you shoot the engineer, I saw you go back to check on the truck and then run up ahead to the engine.”

  “I set the train in motion and jumped off. I needed to shake the police off my tail.”

  “Well, how did you happen to have a truck handy in Ohio?”

  “I had a truck with a forklift as backup. My men shadowed the train on the highway all the way. I kept in touch with them by CB radio. When the chief of police radioed me in the locomotive, I knew my cover was blown. So I simply told my men where to stop, and we transferred the goods from the train to the truck.”

  Ferrar nodded. It was a tidy, well-planned operation. “That brings me to why,” he said, toeing the open pages of the Old Testament with his foot.

  “Why what?” Bolton asked.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Bolton untied the tourniquet from his arm and leaned against the remaining stack of Bibles, the crowbar still level before him. He sucked in his breath as if the heroin rush were coming on fast.

  “Do you think this whole thing is about Islam?” he asked with contempt in his voice. “You’ve got to be kidding. I’m here because I know half the drug cartel in Latin America and Asia, not because of ideology. Don’t you see the big picture? Al-Qaeda needs money, and what better source than drugs?”

  “Where did you get this whacked out drugs-for-weapons scheme? From Ollie North?”

  “Don’t you see the exquisite irony of it? Osama thought it was inspired. While drugs are destroying America, the money America spends on drugs can subsidize the very terrorists whose bombs and chemical and biological agents are bringing the country to its knees. Bin Laden gave me carte blanche to run operations in America.”

  “So, you’re saying that the United States has underwritten the Islamic Holy Wars around the globe.”

  “Now you’ve got it.”

  “But you’re not Muslim.”

  “Far from it. In fact, I’m using them as much as they’re using me. And we both know that.”

  “So you’re in it for the money.”

  “Money? Ridiculous.”

  “Glory, then.”

  “Oh, there’s no glory in this kind of undercover op. Only the aesthetic satisfaction of watching a perfect scheme unfold.”

  “Then you must have some beef with America. What do you hope to get out of this?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with America, and I don’t expect to make a cent.”

  Ferrar eyed him with skepticism. “So it’s not the money or the cause.”

  Tray smirked. “Look at the two of us. We aren’t drug lords or playboys or idealistic radicals. We’re soldiers.”

  “God, so many people like you have sold this country out. It’s a wonderful country, a beautiful land, people who care. What is it, Tray? What is it with you people?”

  Tray took a deep breath and struggled to concentrate. “It’s personal, George. It all boils down to what makes us individuals, what makes us wake up in the morning, what keeps the adrenalin flowing.”

  “Is personal satisfaction enough of a reason to betray your country?”

  “Betray? Should we talk about betrayal? Let’s start with you betraying a friendship.”

  “Me? What did I do?”

  “Bonnie. That’s what you did. You did Bonnie one summer. All summer during college, at The Trap in Bar Harbor. Talk about betrayal. How about you selling out both Bonnie and me?”

  “I didn’t know that you and she were still an item.”

  “An item? That’s teenager talk. There’s so little you ever realized about us. And that blindness will cost you everything.”

  Ferrar felt stunned as if struck by a concussion grenade. Then slowly his mind traveled back to those wonderful, sticky, intoxicating days spent one summer with Bonnie Taylor back in Maine. For two months, they had recaptured those lost days of high school when Tray had once stood between them.

  Tray Bolton sure knew how to make a guy feel cheap. Not only did Ferrar temporarily steal Tray’s girl, he betrayed the trust of his friend.

  And if that weren’t enough, Tray seemed to be making him out as the cause of al-Qaeda’s attack on America. Tray had said that his blindness would cost him everything.

  “Would you mind defining everything?”

  “It will cost you everything you know and value,” Tray said. His angry expression reminded Ferrar of an attacking grizzly bear. “You will die. Bonnie will die. And the country will come to its knees.”

  How little Ferrar had realized during that summer in Maine what enormous ramifications a tryst would have on the world.

  “Okay, while I’m groveling down here in remorse, just let me ask you one last question.” Ferrar eyed the Bibles. “Surely you weren’t transporting Bibles out of Pakistan.”

  “Ah! You were onto me all the way from Pakistan?”

  “Peshawar, Karachi, Bahrain…”

  “…Quebec City, Bar Harbor,” Tray finished for him. “I thought you would appreciate that touch, using my cottage as a transshipment point.”

  Ferrar saw the genius, but failed to share the triumph.

  “So, what do you have in there?”

  “Oh, it’s not in there,” Bolton said, kicking the pallet of Bibles. “It’s up there.” His eyes traveled upward. Ferrar noticed that Tray’s eyes had turned glassy. Surely not from emotion.

  Just then he heard the roar of the DC-7 passing overhead.

  “It’s a bomb,” Tray said simply, with a grandiose, sloppy gesture of the crowbar. “A ten-megaton atomic bomb.”

  Ferrar stopped breathing. No longer did the bomb simply exist in theory. Bolton’s words had made it real. A terrorist with an atom bomb had made the long journey into the heartland of America.

  “And all you want is personal satisfaction? How can your ends possibly justify such massive weapons?”

  “That’s the way we build them. Isn’t it?”

  Suddenly, a red blur streaked out of the darkness toward his head. The crowbar hit Ferrar with incredible swiftness. He was able to duck enough to avoid it whacking him directly across the brow.

  But the crown of his head absorbing a crowbar didn’t feel much better. He fell to the floor in a heap.

  “Try and catch me now,” Bolton said with a guttural laugh.

  In his stupor, Ferrar felt Tray Bolton fumbling clumsily for his wallet. Inside was a wad of cash and several IDs—some false, some not.

  Ferrar was losing touch with his identity anyway as he slipped off into blackness.

  FBI Director Hank Gibson’s office was buzzing with agents trying to coordinate with state and local law enforcement in Missouri. The manhunt was shaping up to be the biggest since the Summer Olympics bombing in Atlanta.

  In the FBI’s search for truth, the last thing they needed was a red herring throwing them off the trail. Hank needed a moment to clear the air with Congressman Connors.

  Connors was still in his office at the far end of Pennsylvania Avenue when he picked up the phone. “Yo?” Connors answered, casually enough.

  “See what I told you?” Hank began at once. “Ferrar phoned you and warned of an attack on the St. Louis Arch. Well, rush hour traffic was held up, crowds stampeded, agents were killed and the Arch didn’t fall. It was all a diversion.”

  “He is in St. Louis now,” Connors reminded him. “Why would Ferrar draw attention to his own whereabouts?”

  “All this fiasco tells me is that the man’s not telling the truth. We’re going to hunt him down and bring him to justice.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  Hank didn’t care as he threw down the phone.

  The guard at the air cargo facility in St. Louis heard his telephone ringing and turned. He was happy to step out of the cold into the relative warmth of his booth to take the call.

  “Yeah?” he answered.

  “This is the SLPD,” a matter-of-fact voice said. “We’re on the lookout for suspected international terrorists in the vicinity. In particular, we want you to keep an
eye out for several suspicious vehicles. One’s a semi truck with a container.”

  “Seen plenty of them today,” the guard reported.

  “The other’s a gold-colored Lincoln Continental with a male driver, black hair, six foot.”

  The guard stiffened. “I just saw a man drive through my gate in a huge boat with a dent in it. It was gold and it may have been a Lincoln Continental.”

  “Good. He’s armed and dangerous.”

  “What do you mean ‘good?’”

  “We’ll be there right away. Just don’t let him leave.” The phone clicked off.

  The guard didn’t move as he stared into the dimly lit cargo area, his fingers frozen to the receiver.

  Ferrar slowly revived only to have a blurry view of his surroundings. He was lying on a slick concrete slab. Cold night air whooshed past an immense opening.

  He seemed to be in a large warehouse.

  In the night sky, a plane roared off. He blinked to clear his vision. Its taillights were awash in the wavering fumes of its engines.

  Then he remembered the crowbar. It brought back immediate and painful sensations. He groaned and felt a numb spot on the crown of his head.

  Suddenly it became crystal clear to him. He had to catch Tray.

  His knees wobbled as he tried to regain his feet. His head felt as big as the building.

  Putting one foot in front of the other, he staggered out toward the airstrip. Along the tarmac, he found an office. He squinted to make out the sign. It read Air Cargo—as good a place as any to start.

  He began to feel a throbbing bump on his crown. The last stage of coming to was losing the numbness that served as a local anesthesia.

  He reached up and felt something warm and sticky seeping from his hairline. His fingers were glistening red in the floodlight. They smelled of iron. At least it was blood and not cranial fluid.

  He closed his eyes and staggered the short remaining distance across a patch of grass to the Air Cargo office. By the time he reached it, he felt sufficiently revived by the cool wind to hang a casual smile on his face.