By now he was certain that he should be hearing the agplane’s big radial engine. But the morning was quiet. Too quiet.
Baumann came out of the house with the telephone relay and small dish antenna. He, too, realized that something was wrong. He stopped and cocked an ear. “Maybe they are having trouble with the engine.”
Speyer grabbed the walkie-talkie out of the back. “Hans, this is unit one, come back.”
There was no answer.
“Hans or Carl, this is unit one, come back.”
Still there was no reply.
Speyer tossed the walkie-talkie in the SUV, pocketed the detonator unit, and shut the tailgate. “We have to get down there. Something has gone wrong.”
15
I-70 WEST OF BALTIMORE
Frances eased the Rover into the right lane a quarter mile back from the convoy. Traffic was moderate at this time of the morning so it was easy to keep up with Speyer’s people. They passed a sign that said BALTIMORE-WASHINGTON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, 27 MILES VIA I-695. There was little doubt in her mind now that she knew what was going on. Speyer’s people were simply making their escape. William, on the other hand, was in the middle of it back at the farm.
Tom Hughes was on the computer. He looked up as they passed the road sign. “It’s the airport then.”
“Are you still in the strike force database?”
“Yes, but they took off about twenty minutes ago.”
Frances glanced over at him. “Have they reached the farm?”
Hughes brought up the Lucky Sevens’ encrypted mission operation program overlaid on a grid reference map of the West Friendship area. “They’re about three miles out from their staging zone.”
“How long would it take them to get up here?”
“Not very long once I convince them it’s what they should do.”
“Get started, love.” It was hard for her to keep her head focused on the task at hand, thinking about William up against Speyer and Baumann. She wanted to be with him more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life. Pregnancy does that to a girl, she thought wryly. And that was something that neither of them had planned.
Hughes’s fingers flew over the keyboard, and after a minute he was into the squadron’s voice circuits. “Good morning, I would like to speak with your commanding officer, Major Heinzman, please.”
The face of a very startled gunnery sergeant came up on the screen. “Who the hell is this? You’re on a U.S. military tactical circuit. Get off now!”
“Gunny, I don’t have the time to have the nice chat that I know you and I could have, so I’m going to show you something,” Hughes said pleasantly. He hit a key and the strike squadron’s entire operations program was shut down, replaced by a rapid-fire profile of Speyer’s entire operation and the role that Lane had in busting it up.
The data transfer took less than ninety seconds, and when the screen cleared again Major Heinzman, in battle fatigues, was there.
“Okay, Mr. Hughes, you have our attention, what can we do for you?”
“Are you in sight of the farm?” Hughes asked.
“No, but we’re coming in on our staging area.”
“I need you to divert your troops to my position so that we can avoid a bloodbath.” Hughes quickly explained the situation to the Lucky Sevens commander. When he was finished he pulled up the mission map, expanded it, and pinpointed the convoy’s location.
Major Heinzman was vexed. “You’re going to have to show my people how you do that to our computers.”
“Agreed,” Hughes said. “How soon can you get here?”
“What about the farm?”
“Bill Lane will take care of that for the moment. We have to deal with this problem first.”
Heinzman consulted with someone off screen and when he came back the mission map insert at the bottom right of Hughes’s screen showed that the helicopters were already turning to the east. “Our ETA is four minutes,” he said. “Those are Captain Speyer’s men, so I’m assuming that they are heavily armed.”
“That’s a good assumption.”
“Okay, we’ll make one pass from the rear and I want you to try to stop traffic if you can.”
“We’ll do our best. Good luck, Major.”
“They’re not getting to the airport, I can guarantee it, sir.”
WEST FRIENDSHIP, MARYLAND
Lane had just crossed the creek and started up the path on the other side when he heard the SUV coming his way. He scrambled off the path and ducked into some brush and high grass, the Austrian-made submachine gun in hand.
The heavy sport utility vehicle was moving fast, and as it flashed past Lane, bumped across the creek and disappeared up toward the house, he caught a brief glimpse of Baumann at the wheel with Speyer riding shotgun. Neither of them looked particularly happy. Lane’s guess was that they tried to make contact with the two men in the barn and were coming back to investigate what the trouble was. It probably meant that Speyer had given the order for the operation to begin. It was a chilling thought. But Lane didn’t understand why Speyer and Baumann hadn’t left with the others. Why had they stuck around at the next-door farm?
Lane got up and started after them. One tank of the virus was still strapped to the airplane, while the other was probably in the SUV. Talk about trotting down into hell, he thought. He was practically slavering to get there.
Baumann pulled up alongside the barn and parked twenty feet from the front. Speyer pulled out a Glock 17 and jumped out of the SUV. Baumann took out his own gun and joined him.
“They should have had the engine started by now,” Speyer said.
They ran to the front of the barn, Baumann scanning the tree line up toward the highway for any sign of movement. He had a feeling in the pit of his stomach that Browne had come back, and that they were all in for it.
Speyer peered around the corner, then went to the big doors and looked through a crack. “Verdammt,” he said. He yanked open the barn door and disappeared inside.
Baumann made a second quick sweep of the open fields around the farm, then followed Speyer inside. Part of the airplane’s engine cowling had been removed and he could see that someone had made a mess of the wires. Heide and Rudolph lay in pools of their own blood.
Speyer went from the airplane to the two downed men, feeling for a pulse. He was beside himself with rage. When he looked up his face was that of an insane man’s. “They’ll pay,” he said through clenched teeth.
“We can worry about revenge later, Herr Kapitän. We must leave now while we still can. We can drive to Frederick as we planned. We can be in Havana with the men by this afternoon.”
“We’re going to stay here and fix the airplane,” Speyer said, getting up. “The mission is still a go. Especially now.”
“Who is going to fly it? Carl is dead.”
“You’ll fly the airplane, Ernst.”
“I’m not a pilot.”
Speyer laughed. “Anybody can turn an ignition switch, taxi down a runway and take off. That’s the easy part.”
“I won’t do this,” Baumann said. Before Speyer could react, Baumann slipped outside and headed back to the SUV.
“Go, you bastard!” Speyer shouted. “Run! Coward!”
Speyer had gone completely mad. There was no reasoning with him now. The only hope was getting out of the country as rapidly as possible.
Lane came up behind the barn from the creek in time to hear the argument. He hurried around to the SUV, checked to make sure that the second tank was in the back, then took the car keys out of the ignition and ducked down out of sight as Baumann came charging around from the front.
When he was sure that Speyer wasn’t coming immediately, he stood up and stepped around the back of the SUV, the submachine gun in the crook of his arm. “Good morning, Ernst.”
Baumann stopped short, his left hand outstretched, and the pistol in his right pointing down toward the ground. “Gott in Himmel,” he said softly. “I knew it was
you.”
“He’s gone completely around the bend, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, yes. He meant to release the virus over Washington whether we got paid or not.”
“Why didn’t you stop him?”
Baumann shook his head as if the question was incomprehensible. “We were following our orders. It was very simple.”
“All those people in Washington would have died.”
“It’s not my responsibility. I was following—”
“Yeah, I know, pal, you were just following your orders,” Lane said harshly.
Baumann saw something in Lane’s eyes and realizing all of a sudden that he was in trouble, started to raise his pistol. Lane pulled off two rapid shots both hitting the German in the heart, killing him instantly.
It was John Browne. Speyer recognized the voice. He stepped back from the barn door, the Glock 17 in his hand, his heart in his throat. He’d seen the bastard in action. They all had in Kalispell and in Germany and again at sea. He was a demon. He had shot Ernst to death, and now he was coming in here to finish the job.
Such a long time since Berlin. They had come a long way out of the ashes; too far for it to end here when they were on the verge of such a fabulous victory. This was the operation that would get the world’s attention.
He glanced at the ruined airplane engine. That was too bad, but the two tanks of virus were still intact. Still just as deadly.
All that stood between him and success now was the one man. Only one.
Speyer turned and hurried back to the ladder up to the hayloft. He looked over his shoulder to make sure that Browne wasn’t right behind him and then scrambled up as quickly and as silently as he could.
Lane came to the partially open door in time to see Speyer disappear up into the dark hayloft. There was still the tank hanging off the airplane wing. If Speyer was nuts enough he might just try to shoot at it. If it exploded there would be enough casualties several miles downwind to fill every funeral home and morgue from here to Baltimore.
He hurried around to the opposite side of the barn. There were four windows along its length, along with a feed chute for loading hay aboard a truck or trailer. Laying the submachine gun aside, he climbed up on the chute and managed to crawl the ten feet or so to the swinging door. Lane eased it open and crawled inside. He was directly beneath the hayloft. The airplane was parked off to his left, and the ladder Speyer had used was to the right.
Speyer would be watching the airplane and the front door.
Lane took out his pistol, went quietly to the ladder, and climbed up to the loft. He hesitated just below the top, easing just high enough to see what was there. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but then he made out a form crouched behind a pile of hay bales ten feet away.
Legally the correct thing for him to do would be to give Speyer a fair warning: Give up, lay your weapon down, raise your hands over your head or I’ll shoot you.
But then again Speyer was obviously completely insane, and there was no telling what a crazy man might be capable of doing. He ordered the deaths of all the crewmen aboard the Maria, and he certainly didn’t give them any warning. Nor was it likely that he had warned Gloria to behave or he was going to cave in her skull with the heel of his boot. He’d even killed his old friend in the chalet back in Germany.
Give him a fair warning first? Give him a chance?
Lane smiled. “I don’t think so,” he said to himself. He rose up and fired three shots as fast as he could pull the Beretta’s trigger.
Speyer rolled off to the side of the hay bales with a cry of pain.
Lane fired two more shots then scrambled up over the top, rolling left as he brought up his pistol.
Speyer, blood stains spreading on his right thigh and high on his right shoulder, was whimpering as he desperately searched for his gun. He’d dropped it and couldn’t find it in the hay.
Lane got up and went over to him.
Speyer looked up, his eyes wide and he started to cry and squeal like a pig being led to slaughter. “There’s money for you. Millions, my God, I swear to Christ, you’ll be a rich—”
“Right,” Lane said. He raised his pistol and fired one shot, hitting Speyer in the forehead between his eyes, at the same time Speyer raised his left hand in supplication.
The morning was suddenly intensely quiet. Lane couldn’t even hear the birds singing. He holstered his pistol and went to Speyer’s body. The German had something clutched in his left hand. Lane pried open Speyer’s fingers and took the small electronic unit out of his hand. It was about the size of a pack of cigarettes with a small antenna, and one caged button. The safety was up. Speyer had pushed the button.
Lane straightened up and looked down at the agplane, his blood running cold. The son of a bitch had sabotaged the plane to blow so that there would be no evidence, no survivors.
He had no idea how long the delayed fuse might be. The choice was searching for and disconnecting the explosive device in time, or risk releasing the virus by trying to disconnect the tank. He had to choose one or the other right now.
I-70 WEST OF BALTIMORE
Traffic on the interstate several miles west of the I-695 interchange had already started to back up when the pair of Iroquois assault helicopters passed behind the convoy of two minivans and two dark gray SUVs.
Speyer’s troops, realizing that something was going on behind them, had sped up when the helicopters flashed across the highway about fifty feet off the deck.
“Break break, command one. Looks like they spotted us,” the pilot of chopper two radioed Major Heinzman. “I have a clear shot.”
“Stand by,” Heinzman said. He directed his pilot to take them ahead of the convoy and threaten the lead car nose to nose.
“Okay, heads up back there,” Heinzman called to the two door gunners. “If they so much as twitch you are authorized to fire.”
“Roger that, sir,” they said. They cycled the bolts on their 7.62mm machineguns.
“Unit two, command one. You are cleared for weapons hot.”
“Aye, weapons hot,” the copilot of chopper two replied. Heinzman’s copilot gave him a questioning look. He nodded and the officer gave him the thumbs-up.
Each helicopter carried six Hellfire AGM-114A air-to-surface missiles, each capable of taking out a ceramic-armored tank. Laser guided, they could not miss. All six on each chopper were armed and pointed at the four vehicles below.
The lead chopper swooped low over the convoy and dropped down to ten feet above the surface of the highway about twenty yards ahead of the SUV. The pilot flew sideways, pacing the convoy, which had slowed way down.
Heinzman was looking directly into the eyes of the driver and passenger. He raised his right hand and motioned for them to slow down and stop.
He could see the indecision on their faces, which finally turned to resignation. They were professional soldiers and they understood that they were outmaneuvered, outgunned and outclassed.
The driver raised his hand in salute and slowed down. Within fifty yards the convoy had come to a complete halt.
The lead chopper turned to face the lead vehicle, its Hellfire missiles locked onto their targets. Chopper two took up position just behind and to the right of the last minivan in the convoy, at an altitude of no more than twenty feet.
Heinzman got on the loud hailer. “Dismount from your vehicles now, with your hands in the air. Leave all your weapons behind, and then get on the pavement facedown.”
Slowly the ten men got out of the vehicles, their hands in plain sight, and lay facedown on the highway. In the distance from the east and west dozens of police vehicles, their lights flashing, were converging on the scene.
One of the door gunners, not realizing his mike was hot, safetied his weapon noisily. “Ah, shit, they gave up too fast,” he said. “That’s no fun.”
WEST FRIENDSHIP, MARYLAND
Lane crouched under the agplane’s wing, hurriedly tracing the plumbing
and control lines that led to the tank. So far as he could tell, the tank’s valve was in the open position. It meant that the spraying system was charged with virus-nitrogen mix. No matter if he closed the valve now; if he tried to disconnect the tank, whatever virus was already in the system would be released.
He stood up and looked at the plane. There were any number of ways to bring it out of the sky, but the simplest to control with a remote detonator would be an explosive device. Possibly Semtex. Easy to use and very powerful.
They were going to overfly Washington, spraying the deadly virus on the city, and then Speyer was going to kill them.
He started at the nose of the airplane, running his hands over and into every nook and cranny. A half-pound of Semtex would be more than enough to take off the prop, or blow the entire engine out of the plane.
He checked under the landing gear, and then back to the wing roots and tail surfaces, conscious that the plane could blow at any moment. But he couldn’t simply turn his back and walk away. A lot of people would die if the virus were to be released, even out here in the country.
Lane climbed onto the left wing and started searching the cabin, reaching under the control panel, and under the seats. Ten minutes after he had come down from the loft his fingers brushed across the brick of Semtex under the backseat.
He gingerly eased it out and, holding it carefully in both hands, stepped back down off the wing and turned away from the airplane. There was an electronic fuse stuck into the plastic, but there was no way of telling if it was active, or if by trying to remove or disconnect it the thing would explode.
He nudged the barn door open with a hip, and then hurried around to the back, and down the path to the creek. He laid the bundle on the ground, backed off a couple of feet and then turned and walked off. Sooner or later it would blow. But back here it would do no harm.
Eden's Gate Page 32