by Dane Hartman
So one by one they leapt out of the moving Lincoln, but because its speed was approaching forty miles per hour this was not an easy stunt to execute. Broken limbs were the rule. One man sustained a broken neck.
The security men were up at the crest of the hill, still shouting, but more hoarsely now. It would take them another few minutes before they could get in any position to use their weapons.
Praying silently that the brakes still functioned, Harry abruptly applied them. The taxi’s two good tires screeched, but gradually the vehicle slowed and came to a halt. The Lincoln tottered precariously over the slope. It was difficult to say where exactly the balancing point was, but Harry advised abandoning the taxi. Ellie concurred wholeheartedly, in spite of the danger that awaited them once they were exposed.
She slipped out the rear first. The Lincoln dipped, the taxi sagged in turn. The balance was perceptibly shifting from the light-weight taxi to the much heavier limousine.
The driver was still prostrate on the floor, scratched and bleeding from the glass, but more immobilized by fear than by pain. So Harry pushed him out, then jumped himself just as the Lincoln plummeted off the slope, carrying with it the taxi. There was a greater clatter of metal and glass, punctuated by an explosion that sent fire and smoke up into the still morning air of San Salvador.
“You all right?” Harry called to Ellie.
She was trying to figure that out. “I guess so.”
They found themselves among a grove of palms and bougainvillea, which exuded a fragrant scent; everywhere there were bugs and mosquitoes, anxious to inspect the visitors who’d dropped in on them so suddenly.
The driver, still moaning, was beginning to crawl away, desperate to escape his tormenters.
Above them, on the road, five or six men lay sprawled out in a variety of contortions. They were struggling to recover from their jump, but they were too incapacitated by their injuries to simply pick themselves up and go on their way.
“I want you to get off this hill, Ellie, and I’ll meet you back at the Sheraton, in the lobby. You just wait for me.”
This time she did not balk. Having endured so much killing, she was in no mood for more. She gave him a brief kiss for luck and vanished into the underbrush.
By this point, the security men had reached this part of the road and it was with considerable dismay that they regarded the scene that greeted them. They divided themselves up; three of the men went to the aid of the injured while their companions fanned out in search of Harry.
Harry ventured farther up the road, keeping behind the palms as he did so, to avoid being spotted.
It was then that he caught a glimpse of Kayyim. The Libyan minister had evidently suffered either a badly twisted or broken ankle. He was hobbling about with a grimace of pain etched onto his face. Nonetheless, he seemed determined to maintain command of the situation, barking orders and waving his gun as though he expected Harry to appear so that he could shoot him without further ado.
Since the grove of palms was really the only place along the road that a man could conceal himself, this was where the security men elected to undertake their search.
Any movement through the grass was likely to be heard; there was little chance of escape, but escape was not Harry’s principal objective. He had not gone to so much trouble to give up on Kayyim now.
One of the security men betrayed his presence. His footsteps caused the undergrowth to rustle noisily, but Harry couldn’t very well turn around and look at him, not without giving himself away.
The guard, an M16 in his hands, stepped around to the other side of the palm, and now Harry saw him. He raised his .44 at the precise moment that the guard realized he was there and brought his own weapon up to fire. But the .44 took him out before he could press the trigger. The roar of the gun naturally alerted the others. There was nothing to do now but fight.
Harry raced to the edge of the road, where he could see clearly and still have a minimum of cover. He spotted one security man rushing him from the right, leading him to believe the other was attempting to go around through the palm trees. He carefully sighted the man he had in view and fired. The guard hurtled backwards, but two others appeared to take his place. And Harry was certain that yet another was making his way surreptitiously toward him on the right.
A military truck of some sort had come into view; well, he should have suspected there’d be reinforcements sooner or later. Replacing his clip, he took aim and fired again. He might have hit one onrushing guard, he wasn’t sure, but the second took a round in his stomach and crashed screaming into a flower-laden bush.
Inches above his head, a hole appeared in a palm tree, then another. Harry rolled in the opposite direction, firing without being sure of where his antagonist was. From the other direction, there was a flurry of shots that screamed into the bush around him.
Then he saw a shadow, something olive, at any rate a shade of green that did not belong to the natural surroundings, and this was all that Harry had and so he used it as his target. The olive shade disappeared with a shriek.
Harry turned to concentrate on those still rushing him. What he saw heartened him. There were four men, firing as they moved, but they were displaying more caution than their late comrades, keeping low so that their advance vaguely resembled a clumsy duck walk.
There was one man who could not keep low enough, and that was Kayyim. His ankle was too painful. So he kept, more or less, erect, firing like the others, though it wasn’t apparent that he could actually see Harry.
But Harry could see him. He stopped his firing which confounded his opponents. They did not know whether they’d hit him or not. When no additional resistance was forthcoming, Kayyim and the surviving security guards were emboldened enough to see whether they had in fact killed him.
It was then that Harry fired, wondering how these men had lived so long if they were this careless. Two guards went down instantly, a third dropped to the ground to safety. Kayyim attempted to follow the latter’s example, but he couldn’t manage to do it quickly enough because of his ankle, and when Harry discharged his Magnum a third time, the round took him in the thigh, forcing him down regardless. Kayyim’s face had gone very pale and on it was a look of stunned disbelief that such a thing could have happened to him.
He still held onto his gun which he attempted to aim even as he hoisted himself up from the dust. His shot came nowhere close to Harry. When the Magnum went off again, he was slapped back down, with his chest opened up and spewing blood onto the roadbed.
For some moments, he tried groping his way up the hill as though this might help him. His fingernails—always so clean and well-manicured—filled with dirt as he did so. He clawed at the ground. Then he gave a deep rasping sound and expired.
By then, Harry was well on his way down the slope. His San Salvador adventure was at an end. But he wasn’t through; he may have stopped Kayyim, but Cravitch was still at large.
For all he knew, Cravitch might be sequestered inside the compound. Maybe he’d been watching the show from the safety of the parapets, enjoying the spectacle with little more anxiety about the fate of the participants than a theatregoer has for those who perform for him on stage. But his time was coming.
C H A P T E R
F o u r t e e n
Because Ellie had family in Miami, or said she did, she told Harry that she would make a stopover there rather than continuing straight on to San Francisco with him. She needed the rest, she said, and Harry did not doubt it. He needed the rest too.
Before they separated, she’d assured him that she cared deeply for him, though she did not use the word love, which was too full of traps. She’d added that she was thinking of breaking off with David Whittier who might have decided the same since he had left San Francisco some weeks before—so claimed his sister—and had not been heard from since. The implication was that Harry might come to replace Whittier in her affections. Harry wasn’t so certain that this was a very good idea, or even
possible, and neither, he gathered, was Ellie.
At their parting, she was subdued and scarcely spoke a word; part of it was surely the exhaustion of the ordeal they’d undergone, singly and together, part of it was her preoccupation with the story she had researched almost at peril of her life. Part of it might have been Harry. It was extremely complicated and Harry returned to San Francisco in something of a funk.
His mood was hardly buoyed by the debriefing he was compelled to undergo either. The man doing the debriefing was Tim Connelly. No CIA presence, just FBI.
“You caused quite a stir while you were abroad, I hear,” Connelly started. He did not sound the least bit displeased, however.
“The world is out one more Libyan,” said Harry.
“So I understand. And believe me, we are grateful for your services. We never expected you would go so far not accomplish so much, and in such a short span of time, I might add. I should imagine that it’ll be difficult for you adjusting to the role of police detective again.”
Harry conceded that it might at that, but he pointed out that it was unlikely to be boring, not with the continued terrorist threat to the city, which had prompted his far-flung investigation in the first place.
“Well, the threat hasn’t ended, to be sure, but it has abated. Since you’ve gone, the agency, in coordination with your department, has managed to make a number of substantial arrests that we believe are going to stick. As a result, there have been no recorded incidents that could possibly be linked to terrorism here in the last few weeks. And we are doing our best to insure that the trend holds.”
“What about the Alpha Group? Have you found the people who killed Smith and Peterson?” He was referring to the two patrolmen shot to death on Route 101. “Or the people responsible for the airport blast?”
“Well, we have some suspects in custody, but I have to admit we haven’t a solid case against them nor have we apprehended all the perpetrators. Still, we have made a big dent in Alpha’s operation. It’ll take some time for them to recover.”
“What about Morgan, the clown who tried to kill Kayyim? You found out anything more about him?”
“It seems ironic that you accomplished what Morgan couldn’t, doesn’t it? But to answer your question it seems, the best we can make out, that he was a freelancer, possibly hired by the Alpha Group. Evidently some of the terrorists felt that Kayyim was giving too much to higher education and not enough to them. Anything else?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Good.” Connelly appeared anxious to bring this debriefing to a close. “There is one more matter I have to take up with you. In recognition for your help to us, the Government would like to present you with a letter of commendation.”
Having so rarely been commended for anything he’d done, Harry was naturally suspicious. He said, “I don’t want a piece of paper. I want Cravitch.”
“You want what?”
“Russell Cravitch, the untouchable.”
Connelly was familiar with the name. “Yes, well Cravitch, as far as I know, is not in the United States at this time and is therefore not in the FBI’s jurisdiction.”
“But he is within the CIA’s. They could find out where he is and stop him. It’s just that they aren’t much interested in doing so.”
Connelly stood up to signal that their meeting was over.
“I am afraid that this is something you’ll have to take up with Mr. Brady.”
“I have talked with Mr. Brady.”
Connelly smiled, rather patronizingly, Harry thought.
“Then there’s nothing more I can suggest. I’m sorry.”
“Bullshit,” was Harry’s judgment, but the FBI agent pretended not to hear him.
Two hours later, a little before two o’clock in the afternoon, the dispatcher reached Harry as he was approaching the corner of Webster and Post.
“Victor Two, Victor Two . . .”
“This is Victor Two.”
“We have a report of a disturbance in the Telegraph Hill area. On the corner of Kearny. Three or four men, possibly armed, were seen entering a building housing TV Station KCVO.”
“Repeat that.”
The dispatcher did. It wasn’t really necessary. Harry knew the building well.
Heavier traffic than usual delayed him and it took nearly half an hour to cross the city to Telegraph Hill. By that time, the disturbance that the dispatcher had initially referred to had turned into an event of far greater magnitude. All available units had been ordered into the area. Now black and whites, police vans, ambulances, and other assorted emergency vehicles cluttered the blocks in the immediate vicinity of the KCVO headquarters, lined up for blocks along Montgomery, Kearny, Filbert and Union. A cordon had been established on the Kearny and Filbert sides of the building.
As soon as Harry stepped out of his car, Captain Avery spotted him. Avery had not seen Harry in some time and remarked on the tan he’d acquired in the exotic locales he’d been in. “It would be nice to get away for a while,” he said offhandedly.
Harry refrained from saying that what he’d taken was not necessarily a vacation; he was anxious to know what the situation was and he believed that Avery could tell him, if he ever got around to it.
Avery eventually did. “We have a feeling it’s the remnants of the Alpha Group, the ones that escaped our dragnet. There may be as few as four or as many as six or seven, we don’t know. Initial reports were sketchy. But about forty-five minutes ago they walked into the reception area on the first floor, suddenly produced their weapons, overcame the lone security man there, and have now seized one, possibly two, floors upstairs, including the newsroom. They’ve sealed themselves in with maybe twenty-five hostages or so. We’ve got one of the station managers down with us, he tells us there are between twenty and thirty people on duty at this time of day.”
Harry noticed that there was a special Pacific Telephone & Telegraph van nearby. Technicians were attempting to establish communication directly into the building; several T.V. monitors were operating, but those tuned to KCVO displayed only the station logo with the message: Technical Difficulties/Please Stand By.
“It’s been that way since 1:35 when the station went off the air. No announcement, nothing, just went off,” said Avery.
“Have the terrorists made any demands yet?”
“Nothing, not a word from them. Nor does anyone answer the telephones, and we’ve got people calling them every couple of minutes. But there is one thing that might give us a lead.”
“And what’s that?”
“The station manager I mentioned to you says that at six o’clock this evening there was going to be a special news report on terrorism. It was listed in the program announcements in the papers and the Chronicle ran a story about it so that it was public knowledge. He feels the terrorist action might be related to the airing of the story.”
Suddenly, Harry was overcome by fear. “Who’s supposed to be doing the story tonight, do you know?”
Avery was puzzled by the change that had come over him, the urgency in his voice. “No, let me get you the station manager, he’ll probably know.”
The station manager turned out to be a short balding man with the air of someone whose nerves have been long since shot. Obviously, the forcible takeover of his station was not making his condition any better. He kept plugging cigarettes into his mouth and lighting them, often ignoring the fact that he’d already one going in the ashtray.
“Who’s doing the six o’clock news?” Harry demanded. There was no time for the ordinary courtesies.
“This is Inspector Callahan,” said Avery, figuring an introduction might be necessary. “And this is Joe Lewiston.”
Lewiston shook his head. “Let’s see if I remember. I’m on at night so I can’t be absolutely sure.” He proceeded to rattle off some names, none of which Harry recognized.
“What about Ellie Winston?”
“Oh yes, of course, she’s the person responsible fo
r the story. She’s the one who gathered all the data, you know.”
“I know very well.”
“So she would be there.”
“Would she be in the building now at two o’clock?”
Actually, Harry was astonished to learn that she was even in the city, much less the building, which was why he hadn’t been as alarmed when the radio call had gone out; he’d assumed that she was still in Miami with her family. He’d expected to hear from her when she got back. Well, the fact of the matter was that there hadn’t been any call, and she was back. Maybe she’d become so involved with her work that she hadn’t found time. But none of that was important now.
“Yes, I would think that she’d have some last minute editing to do so it’s pretty certain she’d be there at this hour of the afternoon. With a major story like she’s got, she’d be editing right up until the time she went on the air.”
He was about to explain further, but Harry had learned all that he needed from the man.
Outside of the phone company’s van, Harry spied Bressler. As always, he looked harassed, especially by members of the press who for weeks had been stalking him in hope of a new disclosure.
In his hands, he held a blueprint of the station. Several high ranking officers were clustered about him. One of them, Harry noted, was Connelly.
“You spoke too soon,” Harry told Connelly. “Whatever dent you made in Alpha wasn’t enough.”
Connelly nodded miserably, but said nothing.
Turning his attention to the blueprint, Harry listened as Bressler indicated all the points of ingress and egress in the building. He concluded a minimum of four men could adequately close off the top two floors and hold them so long as their ammunition lasted. “And of course,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “there are a great number of hostages whose lives would be jeopardized should we make any attempt to storm the area.”