“You said it was enough to bring down a building?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps even enough to breach several walls of a high-security prison?”
“My god,” she exclaimed. “You think he’d use it to kill them in one big blast?
“Possibly. And here we’ve gone and rounded up a large number of them for him to come get in one move.”
“But we wanted him to make a try for the prison, didn’t we?”
“Yes, but that was before we knew he could blow the bloody place up and take out a lot of innocent people. He could even figure out a way to get the stuff to his target without having to get inside.”
Hunter-Bailey turned around and returned to his office, snatching up the phone as he tossed his coat onto a chair.
“Get me the Warden’s office at Portlaoise and be quick about it,” he barked into the receiver, a finger tapping his desk impatiently as he waited for the connection. “Warden Brennan? This is Hunter-Bailey. We’ve reason to believe an attack against the prison using explosives is likely.
“Yes, I said explosives,” he continued. “Yes the target is the special cell you have set up for the New IRA and ISIS people we sent to you. I recommend having as many guards as you can spare patrol the perimeter of the prison. I also recommend that you give extra scrutiny to any package or vehicle passing through the gates. Nothing gets through without thorough inspection. Good, I’ll be there within three hours to look everything over. Thank you.”
“Looks like we’d better get dinner to go,” his second noted.
Hunter-Bailey nodded as he retrieved his coat and hurried out the door believing, for the first time since the hunt began, that he was finally one move ahead of his quarry.”
* * * * *
“You’re a bit lost, aren’t ya?” the guard at the main entry post at Portlaoise asked the latest arrival at the gate.
“Don’t I know it,” the man wearing the uniform of a Limerick Goal guard replied. “I was on my way to work when the boss called and said I was to report here instead. Seems you lot have a bit of excitement about.”
“Ya could say that. Hang on a bit and let me check you in with my boss,” the guard replied, calling in the new arrival to his superior. He listened for a few seconds then confirmed what he’d been told and hung up. “We’ve got every man outside looking for a bomb. You’ve been assigned to keep an eye and a real special bunch we’re holding. Go on inside and someone will direct ya.”
“Thank you,” Del Rio said in what was a very passable Irish accent as he walked through the prison gate, his duffel unchecked. “I’m sure I’ll be of help to you lads.”
* * * * *
An unfortunate decision by a few sheep to dash out onto the highway had caused a very messy four-car collision and backed up traffic for a few miles. By the time they’d gotten an escort from the local Garda to get around the obstruction, they had lost an hour of time and Hunter-Bailey had lost some of his patience. With each passing minute he felt an increasing sense of doom.
But when they arrived at the prison all seemed calm and quite normal. The warden himself greeted them when the pulled up to the main building.
“There you are,” he said. “We were beginning to worry.”
“We’re fine,” Hunter-Bailey said. “Just a bloody accident up the road with no possible detour. What is the status here?”
“We’ve scoured the outer walls thoroughly. Nothing was found and we have men regularly patrolling out there.”
“The prisoners?”
“In their cells, unaware of anything on the outside. I checked in with the new man earlier that we have posted to watch over just that cell area and he reported all was well.”
“New man?”
“Yes. The warden over at Limerick sent him over to help out.”
“Have you seen this man before?”
“No, but he checked out. He just happened to be on his way to work and was close by so he got here first. We’ve had about four other guards from other prisons arrive to help as well. We sent them out to search.”
“And this new man is the only guard in the area with those prisoners?” Hunter-Bailey asked with growing alarm.
“Yes,” the warden replied. “The cell is just one large room surrounded by bars. No need for more than one man as the doors can only be opened with a security code and he does not have this code.”
“Bloody hell,” Hunter-Bailey exclaimed, as he suddenly saw how they’d all been played. He dashed off toward the area – segregated from the rest of the cell blocks - praying he was wrong and knowing he wasn’t.
He reached the security door outside the special area and had to wait for the warden to catch up and enter the code to open it. Once the code was entered and the light flared green, he threw open the door and rushed inside – right into a nightmare.
The security post was unmanned, the Limerick guard nowhere to be seen even though there was no closet, nowhere outside the main cell area to hide. The door to the large square cell remained closed.
But inside the cell, scattered across the floor and on the cots laid out within the area, lay the corpses of all fifty-two of the IRA/ISIS detainees. They’d been shot, like proverbial fish in a barrel, as their executioner had simply walked around the outside of the four-sided cage and fired with deadly accuracy at his helpless victims.
Hunter-Bailey turned wordlessly to his second, who’d retrieved an abandoned duffel from behind the desk.
“A couple of Sigs,” she reported. “Several clips, mostly empty. That’s it. No sign of the C4 in here so he still has that for whatever he thinks he needs it for.”
“How can one man do this?” the warden asked, his voice barely audible as the shock of the carnage had shaken him. “He must be insane.”
“Perhaps,” Hunter-Bailey replied. “Whether driven by rage or insanity, or possibly both, it doesn’t really matter. He’s been trained by the best, he’s survived and overcome worse than we can bring against him and knows us better than we know ourselves.”
“You’re giving up?” the warden asked, shocked.
“No I am not. But I am beginning to think we’re destined to fail against this.”
Hunter-Bailey’s cell phone rang out and he answered it.
“What do you think of my handiwork?”
“Del Rio? How the hell did you get this number…no, never mind. Yes, I’ve seen this massacre. There can be no justification for this, this…slaughter.”
Hunter-Bailey looked over and was pleased to see his second already on her phone trying to trace the call.
“I hope you never have to go through what I have to find out how wrong you are, Laurence. If you could ask Tom, what do you think he’d say?”
“I doubt he’d go for this atrocity. Tom Callum had his limitations.”
“I guess we’ll never know for sure, but that’s a debate for another time. Before your second can arrange to trace this call, let me save you the trouble. Are you still in the holding area?”
“Yes.”
“Go look out the only window.”
“Why?” Hunter-Bailey asked as he walked to the window.
“I’ve got something to show you.”
“Alright,” he said as he looked out. “What am I looking for?”
“The ruins of Cashel Church,” Del Rio replied. “On a hill near Ballyroan about eight miles south of you.”
“It’s pitch black out there, I can’t see a bloody thing that far away.”
“How about now?” Del Rio asked as he disconnected the call.
A second later Hunter-Bailey watched in horror as a huge fireball lifted into the night sky, about eight miles to the south.
SIXTEEN
“Are you sure that is all?” Dougherty asked. “There’s only thirty-eight here?”
“Yes, Killian,” one of his top lieutenants, Colm Tierney, replied. “We ran the count three times to make sure. Just thirty-eight made it here. The rest are dead or locked
up over in Portlaoise. The Brits are behind it, that’s for certain, but why now buggars me if I know.”
“Has to be that Arizona mess,” Dougherty muttered. “We should never have done it there. We should have waited until they left to kill that traitorous bitch. Damned Americans are behind all this, you’ll see. The thrice be-damned Yanks barked at their obedient lapdogs in London to come after us so they could ship us off to that hole of theirs in Cuba.”
“Are we going to make a try for our people over in Portlaoise? We could use them, strike back and make it hurt.”
“Perhaps,” Dougherty answered after a pause. “For tonight, we rest and take stock of what we have and then decide what our next move is. At least we are safe from the Brits here, there’s that.”
“I suppose there is that.”
Dougherty walked out into the main hall of the ruined churched. Four small fires burned on the dirt floor, providing warmth against the chill air, and the remaining members of his group huddled quietly around them.
They were all good men and women, dependable and capable. But there was a gloom hanging over them on this night that no fire could chase away, nor could the fire chase away all of the cold. They were being hunted down, in some cases killed and reportedly without being able to mount any defense. Each of them were all too aware of this and the knowledge was slowly leeching away their morale.
Dougherty walked among them, a touch on an arm here, a spoken word of encouragement there. All the while as he tried to lift their spirits and assure them they would recover, he felt his own spirits sag and his confidence wane.
After a while he abandoned the attempt and stepped out of the main hall, making his way outside to the courtyard that separated the hall from the cemetery. It was a moonless night and he lit a cigarette as he settled against a stone pillar. He took a drag of the cigarette, the red glow of the end brightening slightly.
Then he found himself flying through the air, a blast of light, heat and fire in his wake. His flight was short-lived and came to a painful end when he struck first the wet ground and the one of the marble monuments still standing in the cemetery. Stunned, he took a few seconds to gather his wits before rolling over and looking back at the old church.
Or rather, he looked at the crater where the old church had been just moments ago.
Nothing remained at all of the building he’d just exited. Nothing within those walls could have survived whatever had destroyed it. Only the pillar that he’d leaned against had borne the brunt of the blast, enough to spare his life. He tried to struggle to his feet, but the pain was to great. He crawled to the edge of the crater, looking for any sign of life but saw nothing but carnage and destruction. No one else had survived what he assumed had been a missile strike for he could imagine no other way for the Brits to hit this place so quickly and completely.
He crawled away as quickly as he could, before someone came along and discovered he had survived the blast. His left leg was all but useless and the pain from several other injuries hampered his progress. He was almost to the outer edge of the cemetery, his car parked just on the other side of the wall and hopefully undamaged, when he heard the sound of footsteps approaching from behind.
Hoping that someone else had miraculously survived after all and could help him, he rolled over onto his back and found himself looking at a man he’d never seen before, a man holding a gun aimed directly at him.
“Who are you?” Dougherty rasped.
“Wrong question, Killian Dougherty,” Del Rio replied in a flat tone. “What am I is the right question. What I am is the father of a five-year-old girl your men murdered on a road in Arizona. What I am is your judge and executioner.”
“Mercy,” Dougherty begged as he lifted up his left hand. “For the love o’ god, lad. Mercy.”
Del Rio stared at the fallen man for several long seconds, his aim never wavering. And just when Dougherty began to hope his plea had reached the hunter, Del Rio broke his silence.
Daddy!
“No,” Del Rio said.
Then he pulled the trigger.
SEVENTEEN
“I suppose you are happy with the current situation,” Wells asked Soors as they met in her D.C. office.
“Certainly,” she replied cheerfully. “The last living Del Rio is wanted as an international terrorist and will spend the rest of his days on the run. He won’t have time to interfere with us ever again, even if he manages to avoid being arrested or killed.”
“I’m surprised you don’t have people on your own payroll hunting him too,” Wells remarked, only half-mockingly.
“What makes you think I don’t, Charles?” she said, her tone turning Wells’ blood ice-cold. “He’ll wish the British or the Americans had got to him first if my people do get him.”
“Why is that?”
“Because they’ll bring him to me and I won’t let him die quickly or easily.”
“The blood of an innocent child isn’t enough for you, Georgina?” Wells asked harshly.
“She wasn’t innocent, Charles. She was a Del Rio.”
Wells sat back in his chair without another word. Soors’ obsession with the Del Rio family had clearly turned into all-out madness. There would be no talking her out of it. But the depths of madness she had sunk to was only now becoming apparent to him.
“Now,” she said. “To the real reason for this meeting.”
“And that would be?”
“We’ve been trying to fulfill the Karpov Plan..”
“The bastardized version you mean?”
“The plan,” she corrected with a sharp look thrown in Wells’ direction. “By way of using proxies to take control of the government and all of them have failed us quite miserably.”
“Spectacularly, I would say,” Wells jibbed, drawing another look.
“Perhaps. Which is why we are done with using proxies.”
“And in their place we use…?”
“Us,” she said matter-of-factly. “More specifically, me.”
“You?” Wells exclaimed, too shocked to even try at a stinging remark. “You’re just going to walk into the Oval Office and expect them to hand you the keys?”
“The Oval Office?,” she replied. “No. But when the time comes, they will be handing me the keys to all of it, Charles. And instead of us handing over control to anyone in Russia, we’ll be taking their keys from them too.”
“And how do you plan to accomplish all of that?”
“A surgical strike, Charles,” she said in a serious tone that left little doubt of her sincerity. “A device placed inside the White House itself, the heart of the district, large enough to obliterate every branch of the government but small enough to get past security.
“In the aftermath,” she continued. “Certain people of authority will release information on those ‘responsible’ for the heinous act along with calls to appoint an ‘interim’ leader to guide the country through these perilous times.”
“You?”
“Me. Of course the people will be told that it is only temporary until a new Congress can be formed and an election held.”
“But this ‘Congress’ will be staffed with those loyal only to you?”
“Why Charles, you see already how perfect the plan is.”
“Yes, I see quite clearly, Georgina,” he said, surprised he could keep the horror out of his voice. “And what will be my role in this?”
“You control the treasury, Charles, as you always have. We will need your expertise in this. Perhaps you can even take on a Governorship of whatever state you desire.”
“I can ask for no more,” he replied, suddenly overcome with an urge to flee this room as quickly as he could. “If you will excuse me, I have another urgent matter to attend to. I trust you will keep me informed of our progress.”
“Of course, Charles. And I cannot begin to tell you how happy I am that you are fully onboard.”
Wells fled for the door as quickly as he could without saying anoth
er word. He took refuge in the elevator, and could not get out of the cab quickly enough once he reached the ground floor.
His driver looked at him in alarm when he caught sight of Wells’ face. But Wells waved aside his concern as he got into the car and ordered the man to take him back to his home. He shakily poured himself a drink from the small bar in the back seat and downed it before repeating the sequence once more.
Georgina was mad, insane, a lunatic and every other term known to the medical sciences devoted to a diseased mind. But even if he was willing to sacrifice everything by going to the authorities, she could still strike before any action could be taken against her.
He would have to stay in the loop as it were, until he could discover exactly how this ‘device’, which could only be some type of small-yield nuclear bomb judging by her description, was going to be placed in the White House and then move against her without alerting anyone in the government.
He’d tried for so long, he thought to himself as his car pulled into the driveway of his home, to stay true to Karpov’s original plan for all of these years. Despite the split between the original families who had arrived here in the late forties, despite the change in directions and objectives over the years that were further removed from Karpov’s original intent, he had tried.
He had tried and he had failed.
Now, sick at heart, he walked through his front door and headed straight for his study and sat heavily in the chair that had been his father’s favorite possession. He sat there, trying to figure out how he could best proceed and have any chance of success. Until it struck him that there was only one way to stop Soors.
And only one man in the world capable of doing it.
He tapped the keyboard of his computer and entered the password when the lock screen popped up. Then he opened up his browser and ran a quick search. The man he needed he could not contact directly. But there was a person he could contact who might be able to discreetly pass along a message. He found the e-mail address he was looking for. Not her work e-mail of course as he knew she no longer worked there. But she did list a private e-mail on her social media and to that he addressed a quick note to her:
Jack Del Rio: Complete Trilogy: Reservations, Betrayals, Endgames Page 53