It was the shaven-headed man he had first spotted. Hunched over in a crouch, the gunman was sidling off to the right, trying to make it back into the shelter of the trees and then come up on his flank.
Jon squeezed off three shots in rapid succession.
The bald man stumbled. His silenced pistol tumbled to the ground. Slowly he fell forward onto his hands and knees. Blood poured out of his mouth. Black in the dim light, it spilled across the brick pavement in a widening pool.
More bullets ripped past Smith as the wounded man’s comrades kept shooting. One round punched through the broad felt brim of his brand-new Stetson and tore it right off his head. The hat sailed off into the shadows. They were getting way too close, he thought grimly—starting to zero in on him.
He threw himself prone and fired three more shots with his SIG-Sauer, trying to keep their heads down or at least shake their aim. Then he rolled quickly over to where Heather Donovan lay with her face pressed to the earth. She had stopped screaming, but he could see her shoulders shaking as terrified sobs wracked her whole body.
The three unhurt gunmen had spotted his movement. They were shooting lower now, taking the time to aim. Nine-millimeter pistol rounds tore at the earth all around Jon and the Movement spokeswoman. Others, slightly wider off the mark, sent shattered bits of brick flying.
Smith grimaced. They needed to get out of here, and fast. He put his hand gently on the back of the frightened woman’s head. She quivered but stayed down. “We’ve got to keep moving,” he said urgently. “Come on! Crawl, damn it! Head for that big cottonwood tree over there. It’s only a few yards away.”
She turned her head toward him. Her eyes were wide in the darkness. He wasn’t sure she had even heard him.
“Let’s go!” he told her again, louder this time. “If you stay low, you can make it.”
She shook her head desperately, smudging her cheek against the ground. She was frozen, he realized, paralyzed with fear.
Smith grimaced. If he left her and scrambled into cover behind that tree, she was dead. If he stayed with her out here in the open, they were probably both dead. The smart move was to leave her. But if he ran for it, he doubted the gunmen would leave her alone. They did not seem like the kind who believed in letting potential witnesses live. There were limits to what he could stomach—and abandoning this woman to save his own skin would blow right through them.
Instead, he raised his pistol and began firing back at the barely visible gunmen. The SIG-Sauer’s slide locked open. Thirteen rounds expended. He hit the release catch, dumped the empty magazine out, and slapped in his second and last clip.
Smith saw that two of the gunmen were in motion, edging rapidly to the left and right while staying low. They were trying to outflank him. Once they were in position, they could nail him with a murderous crossfire. The trees here were too widely spaced to provide cover from all angles. Meanwhile, the third man was still shooting steadily to keep Jon’s head down—covering the pincers movement by his teammates.
Smith swore silently. He had waited too long. Now he was pinned down.
Well then, he would just have to fight it out here and see how many of the enemy he could take with him. Another bullet slammed into the ground within inches of his head. Jon spat out bits of torn grass and dirt and took aim, trying to draw a bead on the attacker swinging around his right flank.
More shots suddenly rang out, echoing across the Plaza. The gunman moving to his right screamed in agony. He went down, moaning loudly and clutching at his mangled shoulder. His comrades stared at him in shock for a moment and then whirled around—frantically looking toward the shadowy mass of trees along the square’s southern edge.
Smith’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. He had not fired those shots. And the bad guys were using silenced weapons. So who else had just joined this fight?
The new gunfire continued, hammering the ground and trees around the two unwounded gunmen. This unexpected counterattack must have been too much for them. They fell back rapidly, retreating north toward the street fronting the Palace of the Governors. One of them dragged the wounded man to his feet and helped him hobble away. The other made a sudden dash toward the man Jon had hit, but more bullets lashed the pavement at his feet—driving him back into the concealing shadows.
Smith saw movement at the edge of the trees to his right. A lean gray-haired man came out into the open, advancing steadily while firing the pistol he held in a two-handed shooting grip. He slipped into the cover provided by the Civil War obelisk and reloaded his weapon, a 9mm Browning Hi-Power
Silence again fell across the Plaza.
The newcomer looked across toward Smith. He shrugged apologetically. “Very sorry about the delay, Jon,” he called softly. “It took longer to work my way around behind those fellows than I anticipated.”
It was Peter Howell. Smith stared in utter amazement at his old friend. The former British Special Air Service officer and MI6 agent wore a heavy sheepskin coat over a faded red-and-green flannel shirt and a pair of denims. His thick gray hair, normally cropped short, was now a long, curling mane that framed a pair of pale blue eyes and a deeply lined face weathered by years of exposure to the wind, sun, and other elements.
Both men heard the sound of a car suddenly racing along the north edge of the square. Brakes squealed as it stopped briefly and then roared off into the night—heading east along Palace Avenue toward the ring road of the Paseo de Peralta.
“Damnation!” Peter growled. “I should have realized those lads would have backup and a quick way out if things went pear-shaped for them. As they have.” He hefted his Browning. “Keep watch here, Jon, while I conduct a quick recce.”
Before Smith could say anything, the older man loped forward and vanished into the shadows.
The Lazarus Movement spokeswoman raised her head warily. Tears ran down her face, trickling through the dirt streaking her pale skin. “Is it over?” she whispered.
Smith nodded. “I certainly hope so,” he told her, still scanning the darkness around them—making sure no one else was out there.
Slowly, shakily, the slender woman sat up. She stared at Jon and at the pistol in his hand. “You aren’t really a reporter, are you?”
“No,” he said softly. “I’m afraid not.”
“Then who—”
Peter Howell’s return cut short her question. “They’ve done a bunk,” he said irritably. His gaze fell on the shaven-headed man Smith had shot. He nodded in satisfaction. “But at least they had to leave this one behind.”
He knelt down and rolled the body over. Then he shook his head. “Poor fellow’s deader than Judas Iscariot,” Peter announced coolly. “You hit him twice. Fairly good marksmanship for a simple country doctor, I’d say.”
He rummaged through the dead man’s pockets, looking for a wallet or papers that might help identify him.
“Anything?” Smith asked.
Peter shook his head. “Not so much as a matchbook.” He looked up at the American. “Whoever hired this poor sod made sure he was clean before sending him off to kill you.”
Jon nodded. The would-be assassin had been stripped of anything that could link him to those who had issued his orders. “That’s too bad,” he said, frowning.
“It is a pity when the opposition thinks ahead,” Peter agreed. “But all is not yet lost.”
The former SAS officer pulled a small camera out of one of his coat pockets and snapped several close-up photos of the dead man’s face. He was using super-high-speed film, so there was no flash. Then he tucked the camera away and tugged out another small gadget—this one about the size of a paperback book. It had a flat clear screen and several control buttons on the side. He noticed Smith staring at it in fascination.
“It’s a digital fingerprint scanner,” Peter explained. “Does the trick with nice clean electrons, instead of all that messy old ink.” His teeth gleamed white in the darkness. “Whatever will the boffins dream up next, eh?”
/> Working quickly, he pressed the dead man’s hands to the surface of the scanner, first the right and then the left. It flashed, hummed, and whirred—storing the images of all ten fingerprints in its memory card.
“Collecting mementos for your old age, are you?” Smith asked pointedly, knowing full well that his friend must be working for London again. Ostensibly retired, Peter was periodically pressed back into service, usually by MI6, the British secret intelligence service. He was a maverick who preferred working alone, a throwback to the eccentric, sometimes piratical, English adventurers who had long ago helped build an empire.
Peter only smiled.
“I don’t mean to rush you,” Smith said. “But shouldn’t we be making tracks ourselves? Unless you really want to try explaining all this to the Santa Fe police, that is.” He waved a hand at the body on the ground and the bullet-pocked trees.
The Englishman eyed him carefully. “Curious thing, that,” he said, rising to his feet. He tapped the tiny radio receiver in his ear. “This is set to the police frequency. And I can tell you that the local constabulary has been very busy over these past several minutes—responding to emergency calls in all directions … and always on the very farthest outskirts of the city. The nearest patrol car is still at least ten minutes away.”
Smith shook his head in disbelief. “Good grief! These people don’t mess around, do they?”
“No, Jon,” Peter said quietly. “They do not. Which is why I strongly suggest you find a new place to stay tonight. Somewhere discreet and unobserved.”
“Oh, my God,” said a small voice from behind them.
Both men turned. Heather Donovan was standing there, staring down in horror at the dead man at their feet.
“Do you know him?” Smith asked gently.
She nodded unwillingly. “Not personally. I don’t even know his name. But I’ve seen him around the Movement camp and at the rally.”
“And in the Lazarus command tent,” Peter said sternly. “As you well know.”
The slender woman blushed. “Yes,” she admitted. “He was part of a band of activists our top organizers brought in … for what they said were ‘special tasks.’ ”
“Like cutting through the Teller Institute’s fence when the rally turned ugly,” Peter reminded her.
“Yes, that’s true.” Her shoulders slumped. “But I never imagined they were carrying guns. Or that they would try to kill anyone.” She looked at them with eyes that were haunted and full of shame. “Nothing was supposed to happen this way!”
“I rather suspect there are a number of things about the Lazarus Movement you never imagined, Ms. Donovan,” the gray-haired Englishman told her. “And I think you’ve had a very narrow and very lucky escape.”
“She can’t go back to the Movement camp, Peter,” Smith realized. “It would be too dangerous.”
“Perhaps it might,” the older man agreed. “Our gun-toting friends have run off for now, but there may well be others who would not be happy to see Ms. Donovan looking so hale and hearty.”
Her face whitened.
“Do you have somewhere you can stay out of sight for a while, with family or friends? With people who aren’t in the Lazarus Movement?” Smith asked. “Preferably somewhere far away?”
She nodded slowly. “I have an aunt in Baltimore.”
“Good,” said Smith. “I think you should fly out there straightaway. Tonight, if possible.”
“Leave this to me, Jon,” Peter told him. “Your face and name are rather too well known to these people now. If you arrive at the airport with Ms. Donovan, you might as well paint a target on her back.”
Smith nodded.
“You were at the rally, too!” she suddenly said, looking more closely at Peter Howell’s face. “But you said your name was Malachi. Malachi MacNamara!”
He nodded with a slight smile creasing his deeply lined face. “A nom de guerre, Ms. Donovan. A regrettable deception, perhaps, but a necessary one.”
“Then who are you people really?” she asked. She looked from the lean, weather-beaten Englishman to Smith and then back again. “CIA? FBI? Someone else?”
“Ask us no more questions and we’ll tell you no more lies,” Peter said. His pale blue eyes twinkled. “But we are your friends. Of that you may be sure.” His expression darkened. “Which is far more than I can say for some of your former comrades in the Movement.”
Chapter
Twenty-Two
Saturday, October 16
CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
Shortly after midnight, Director of Central Intelligence David Hanson walked briskly into his gray-carpeted seventh-floor office suite. Despite the rigors of what had become an eighteen-hour workday, he was still immaculately dressed in a well-tailored suit, with a crisp, clean shirt and a perfectly knotted bow tie. He turned his careful gaze on the rumpled, tired-looking man waiting for him.
“We need to talk, Hal,” he said tightly. “Privately.”
Hal Burke, head of the CIA’s Lazarus Movement task force, nodded. “Yes, we do.”
The CIA director led the way into his inner office and tossed his briefcase onto one of the two comfortably upholstered chairs in front of his desk. He waved Burke into the other. Then Hanson folded his hands together and rested his elbows on the bare surface of his large desk. He studied his subordinate over the tips of his fingers. “I’ve just come from the White House. As you can imagine, the president is not especially happy with us or with the FBI right now.”
“We warned him about what would happen if the Lazarus Movement ran wild,” Burke said bluntly. “The Teller Institute, the Telos lab out in California, and this bomb blast in Chicago were just the opening rounds. We’ve got to stop pussyfooting around. We have to hit the Movement hard now, before it digs in any deeper. Some of its mid-level activists are still out in the open. If we can haul those people in and break them open, we still have a shot at penetrating to the inner core. That’s our best hope for pulling Lazarus apart from the inside out.”
“I’ve made that point very strongly,” Hanson told him. “And I’m not the only one. Castilla is getting an earful from senior Senate and House leaders—from both parties.”
Burke nodded. The word inside the CIA was that Hanson had been making the rounds on Capitol Hill for most of the day, privately meeting with the heads of the Senate and House intelligence committees and with the majority and minority leaders in both chambers. As a result, his powerful congressional allies were demanding that President Castilla officially designate the Lazarus Movement as a terrorist organization. Once that happened, the gloves could come off and federal law-enforcement and intelligence agencies would be free to act forcefully against the Movement—going after its leaders, bank accounts, and public communications channels.
By making an end run around the president to Congress, however, Hanson was playing with fire. CIA directors were not supposed to use politics to manipulate the policies of the president they served. But Hanson had always been willing to take chances when the stakes were high, and he obviously thought his support in the House and Senate was strong enough to protect him from Castilla’s anger.
“Any luck?” Burke asked.
Hanson shook his head. “Not so far.”
Burke scowled. “Why the hell not?”
“Ever since the Teller Massacre, Lazarus and his followers have been riding a huge wave of public sympathy and support. Especially in Europe and Asia,” the CIA director reminded him. He shrugged. “These latest acts of violence might dent that a bit, but too many people are going to buy the Lazarus line that the Telos and Chicago attacks were faked to discredit their cause. So governments around the world are putting serious diplomatic pressure on us to back off the Movement. They’re telling the president that aggressive action against Lazarus could trigger violent anti-American unrest in their own countries.”
Burke snorted in disgust. “Are you telling me that Castilla is willing to let Paris or Berlin or s
ome other two-bit foreign power hold a veto over our counterterrorism policy?”
“Not a veto precisely,” Hanson said. “But he won’t move openly—not until we produce rock-solid evidence that the Lazarus Movement is pulling the strings on these terrorist acts.”
For several seconds Burke sat silently staring back at his superior. Then he nodded. “That can be arranged.”
“Genuine evidence, Hal,” the head of the CIA warned. “Facts that will stand up to the closest scrutiny. Do you understand me?”
Again, Burke nodded. Oh, I understand you, David, he thought—and maybe better than you do yourself. Inside his mind he was working furiously on new ways to retrieve the situation that had begun spiraling out of his control at the Teller Institute.
Rural Virginia, Outside the Beltway
Three hours before dawn, bands of cold rain swept in succession across the Virginia countryside, drenching the already-sodden fields and woods below. Autumn was usually a time of drier weather, especially after the humid, tropical thunderstorms of the summer months, but the weather patterns were off-kilter this year.
Roughly forty miles southwest of Washington, D.C., a small farmhouse sat on a low rise overlooking a few sparse stands of trees, a stagnant pond, and forty acres of patchy grassland now mostly choked with weeds and dense thickets of brambles. The roofless, blackened ruins of an old barn stood close to the house. The remnants of a fence surrounded the farm’s empty, overgrown fields, but most of the wooden fence rails and posts either were split or lay rotting in the tall grass, briars, and weeds. A rutted gravel track ran up the rise from the paved county road paralleling the fence. It ended at an oil-stained concrete slab just outside the front door of the farmhouse.
At first glance, the small satellite dish on the roof and a microwave relay tower on a nearby hill were the only pieces of evidence that this tumbledown farm had any ties whatever to the modern age. In reality, a state-of-the-art alarm system secured the farmhouse, which was furnished inside with the latest in CIA high-tech computer and electronics gear.
The Lazarus Vendetta Page 17