Day of Wrath

by Larry Bond

  Mcdowell flinched. “Wait!”

  Thorn eased up. “You want to try again?” Seeing the other man nod frantically, he asked, “Where were you taking us?”

  The FBI agent hesitated, felt the pistol prod his temple again, and reluctantly admitted, “To a field outside Chantilly.”

  “And who’s waiting for us there?”

  Mcdowell’s voice dropped off to a whisper. “A man named Wolf.”

  “Heinrich Wolf?” Farrell asked, clearly taken aback.

  Mcdowell nodded abjectly.

  Thorn looked down at the other man in disgust. “And what did Herr Wolf plan to do … in that field outside Chantilly?”

  “Kill you,” the FBI agent mumbled. He hung his head, utterly defeated now.

  “Christ!” Farrell exploded. He slid the Beretta back into his holster. “Looks like I owe you a big apology, Pete.”

  Thorn shook his head. “None needed, Sam.”

  Helen stalked forward, drawing closer to the kneeling Mcdowell. Her lip curled in disdain. “Who’s in that other car parked down the block?

  More of Wolf’s men?”

  “What other car?” Mcdowell said, plainly bewildered. “Farrell and I came alone. I swear it!”

  She stared down at him. “You really are an idiot, aren’t you? Didn’t it ever occur to you that Wolf wants you dead, too? That once he’d finished us off, you’d have outlived your usefulness?”

  Thorn watched the realization sink in on Mcdowell’s sweating face. He caught the raw smell of alcohol under the sweat now. The FBI agent paled even further. He leaned forward again.

  “Now that we’re all on the same page, Larry, let’s take this from the top, shall we?”

  Then, step by step, question by question, he dragged the whole sordid story out of the other man. How Mcdowell had sold his soul to the Stasi for a little hard cash years before. How Wolf had blackmailed him in Moscow — forcing him to feed the German information on the ongoing crash investigation. How he’d followed Wolf’s instructions to blacken Helen’s and Thorn’s names with the FBI and other government agencies every chance he got. The one thing he didn’t know was whether or not the German was the top dog in this criminal organization. He’d never had any contact with Prince Ibrahim al Saud.

  When Thorn was through, he pulled the pistol back from the FBI agent’s temple and decocked it. Mcdowell swayed and slumped forward onto his hands and knees, head down, panting as though he’d just stumbled over the finish line in a marathon.

  Helen stared down at her former boss in cold contempt. “You fucking little weasel! I’m going to look forward to seeing you in prison for the rest of your life.” She looked up at Thorn and Farrell.

  “What do we do now?”

  “Take him to the FBI?” Farrell wondered.

  Helen considered Farrell’s suggestion, then shook her head no.

  “Somehow I doubt that Larry here will be quite as cooperative without a gun pressed to his head. Then it comes down to his word against ours... and he’s stacked the deck there.”

  Farrell nodded slowly.

  “There’s only one thing we can do,” Thorn said quietly. “Herr Wolf has gone to a lot of trouble to arrange a reception for us near Chantilly. Let’s at least meet him halfway.”

  Mobile Surveillance Unit, Washington, D.C.

  Max Harzer watched the four Americans emerge from the town house and climb into the FBI agent Mcdowell’s dark blue Ford Taurus. With one hand, he lifted his cellular phone from the seat beside him and punched in Reichardt’s number. The other hand turned the key in the ignition.

  “Yes.” It was Reichardt. There was no disguising that clipped, authoritative voice.

  “This is Harzer, sir. They’re on the way.”

  “All of them?” Reichardt asked.

  “Yes, sir.” Harzer watched the Americans drive past him, then put his own vehicle in gear. “The woman is driving.”

  He pulled out onto the street and turned after them.

  “Very good, Harzer,” Reichardt said. “But stay well back. There’s no point in spooking the prey so close to the snare. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.” The German reduced his speed slightly, careful to keep three or four other cars between his and the Americans’ vehicle.

  “Keep me informed.”

  The phone cut off. Harzer put it down on the seat again and concentrated on his driving. Ideally, he would have had a partner in the car to help keep the Americans in sight, but with the Operation so close to completion all of Reichardt’s available manpower was fully committed.

  He followed the Americans onto Connecticut Avenue heading south, trailed them around Dupont Circle, out onto New Hampshire Avenue, into Washington Circle, and then down 23rd Street. Harzer was four car lengths behind when Mcdowell’s vehicle shot ahead through a yellow light that turned red before he could cross the intersection.

  He dialed the phone again.

  “Report.”

  “I’ve lost them, sir,” Harzer said, quickly explaining what had happened.

  “Was their action deliberate?” Reichardt asked.

  The German thought back. Since arriving in America he’d noticed that most drivers seemed to view a yellow light the way a Spanish bull saw a red cape. He doubted that the woman Gray was any different. “No, sir. I don’t believe so.”

  The light turned green again.

  “And they were still headed for the Roosevelt Bridge?”

  Harzer nodded into the phone. “Yes, sir. With no sign of any deviation. They should be almost on the bridge now.”

  “Then carry on, Harzer. You ought to pick them up again on Route 50. Reichardt out.”

  Off Route 50, Near Chantilly, Virginia

  The grass field lay quiet under a dark, cloudless night sky. Crickets chirped ceaselessly in a whirring, rising and falling, rhythm.

  A light wind rustled through the trees surrounding the open, empty ground. Only a few survey stakes, a darkened construction trailer, and a newly graded dirt road indicated that the field would soon be the site of yet another office complex.

  From his position in the treeline just to the north, Rolf Ulrich Reichardt looked down at the luminous dial of his watch again.

  Another ten minutes had gone by. He turned to Schaaf. “Anything?”

  The taciturn ex-commando flipped down his nightvision goggles.

  He scanned the edge of the field where the new road cut through the bordering woods, and then shook his head. “Nichts.”

  Reichardt frowned. Schaaf had four men concealed in carefully chosen positions around the empty construction trailer.

  Each was armed with a silenced MP5 submachine gun. Once the four Americans arrived, the ambush team had orders to cut them all down as soon as Mcdowell led them toward the trailer. Thorn, Gray, Farrell, and the traitorous FBI agent would be dead before they even hit the ground.

  Once they arrived … His frown deepened into a scowl. They ought to have been here by now.

  The cellular phone clipped to his belt vibrated softly. He snapped it open. “Reichardt.”

  “This is Harzer. I’m at the far end of the dirt road. But I don’t see any sign of the Americans’ car.”

  Unbelievable.

  “Clear the area, Harzer. Return to the compound.” Reichardt flipped the phone shut and spun toward Schaaf. “Something’s gone wrong. Recall your men. We’re getting out of here — now!”

  He moved back deeper into the concealing woods while Schaaf loped across the open ground toward the construction trailer. An instinctive, unreasoning shiver ran swiftly down his spine. Thorn and Gray had obviously stumbled onto his plan to ambush them. But how?

  And, more to the point, what would they do now?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE ABYSS

  JUNE 17

  Outside the Caraco Complex, Chantilly, Virginia

  Helen Gray lay flat in the tall grass beneath the spreading branches of a large oak tree. Sam Farrell lay right beside
her, studying the main gate of the well-lit Caraco complex through the binoculars they’d appropriated from Mcdowell’s car. They were a few feet back from the verge of the road and roughly fifty yards away from the perimeter fence surrounding the facility.

  Peter Thorn was further behind them, deeper in the belt of trees — holding a gun to the still-cowed Mcdowell’s head.

  Helen stayed still as a convoy of three vehicles — two four-door sedans and a minivan — swept past them, slowed, and turned into the drive leading to the gate.

  “Here we go!” Farrell said. “That’s got to be them.”

  Helen nodded. The timing was about right — allowing a certain number of minutes for Wolf to realize they weren’t going to walk blithely into his trap, and more minutes for the Caraco security chief and his men to regroup and drive back here.

  One after another, the uniformed guards manning the gate cleared the three vehicles and waved them through. All of them turned left and pulled into a parking lot adjacent to one of the three buildings — the one with a forest of radio and microwave relay antennas on its roof.

  “Well, well, well,” Farrell murmured. “There that son of a bitch is — without those fake glasses, too.”

  He passed the binoculars to Helen. “Wolf just got out of the first car. Tall. Gray-haired. He’s not carrying anything in his hands.”

  She adjusted the focus, zeroing in on the area Farrell had indicated.

  The angry-looking face of the man they knew as Heinrich Wolf jumped into view. She gritted her teeth. So this was the bastard who’d arranged the cold-blooded murder of so many people, including that of Alexei Koniev. In that instant, she knew that if she’d been looking through the scope of a highpowered rifle instead of a pair of binoculars, she’d have squeezed the trigger without hesitation.

  Satisfied that she would recognize the German when she saw him again, Helen surveyed the others in the group. The rest were dressed in dark-colored clothing and carried black cases — the kind of cases used to carry weapons.

  Moving as a group, the Caraco contingent filed into the building and disappeared from view.

  Helen lowered the binoculars, tapped Farrell on the shoulder, and then slithered backward until she was out of sight from the road. The general followed her more slowly, making far more noise than she did despite his best efforts. She hid a smile. Sam Farrell was a very good friend and a brilliant strategist, but his tradecraft was a lot rustier than he’d ever admit.

  They rejoined Peter near where they’d parked Mcdowell’s Ford.

  After filling him in on what they’d seen, Farrell asked the obvious question. “Okay, now that we know for sure Wolf’s one of the bad guys, what’s our next move? We still don’t have enough to go to the FBI or the police.”

  “No, we don’t,” Helen reluctantly agreed.

  Nothing they’d seen constituted significant evidence, not the kind that would get them safely through the front doors of the Hoover Building, or even come close to winning a judge’s approval for a search warrant against the Caraco facility. That was why she’d argued they should bounce Wolf and his men at the ambush site — a plan both Farrell and Peter had vetoed. Both men pointed out that going up against an unknown number of armed enemies, on ground of their own choosing, and in the dark, could come close to counting as suicide. The clincher was the fact that they couldn’t be absolutely sure the Caraco security chief had told Mcdowell the real location for the ambush. In a treacherous game where double crosses were the basic currency, they couldn’t take anything on face value.

  “Fine. We need more hard evidence. Then I suggest we take the steps needed to get it,” Peter said abruptly.

  “You have a plan, Pete … or just some noble intentions?” Farrell wondered.

  “More a rough outline than a detailed blueprint,” Peter admitted.

  He shrugged. “We know there’s one guy who’s got all the answers we need. So I say we wait for Mr. Wolf to leave his lain-and then we arrange a little chat.”

  “You proposing a kidnapping?” Farrell asked grimly.

  “Call it a citizen’s arrest,” he said, grinning. He nodded toward the assortment of gear they’d found in the Taurus’s trunk and back seat.

  “Especially since Mr. Mcdowell here has so thoughtfully provided us with all the essentials.”

  Mcdowell opened his mouth to protest, then shut it abruptly when Peter jabbed him lightly with the pistol. He’d been told before to keep his trap shut unless they asked him a direct question.

  Helen hated to rain on Peter’s parade, but she had to ask the obvious question. “What makes you think Wolf is going to go anywhere?”

  “Educated guesswork,” he said. He ran quickly through his reasoning process. “Look, I don’t think this guy Wolf is the head honcho of this operation. He’s too involved in the detail work.

  Somebody else somewhere has to be pulling the strings — looking at the big picture. Now that we’ve slipped the leash, I think Wolf will go running to his master for new instructions. And I don’t think he’ll trust that kind of information to the phone. I think he’ll go in person.”

  “To Ibrahim?” Farrell guessed.

  “I think so.”

  “He’s smart enough. And tough enough,” Farrell said slowly.

  “But what I don’t understand is why he’d run a smuggling operation of any kind — let alone one involving a Russian nuke!

  Caraco’s a multibillion-dollar corporation, which means Ibrahim personally has to be worth at least a few hundred mil.”

  “Maybe the money’s not enough,” Peter said. “Or maybe money was never the real objective — just a means to an end. This end.”

  Helen jumped in. “We can leave finding the motive up to the U.S. attorney’s office, Sam.” She frowned. “I think Peter’s right. From what you’ve told us, Caraco is practically Ibrahim’s personal fiefdom. I doubt Wolf could run such a huge show without his knowledge — or consent.”

  “Yeah. That makes sense.” Farrell turned back to Peter.

  “Which still leaves us with a problem. How do you propose divvying up the assignments for this little shindig you’re planning?”’

  “I think that falls out pretty logically,” Helen said, after a rapid glance at Peter. “You’ve got a cell phone, don’t you?”

  Farrell nodded. He patted his jacket pocket. “Last year’s Christmas gift from Louisa. I don’t like the damned thing, but she wants to keep tabs on me when I’m out of the house.”

  “So that plus Mcdowell’s binoculars makes you the lookout,” Peter said. “Between your Beretta and this” — he hefted the SIG P228 he was still pointing at the white-faced Mcdowell — “Helen and I shouldn’t have much problem persuading Herr Wolf to listen to reason.”

  Seeing Farrell starting to look stubborn, Helen laid a hand on his arm.

  “Please, Sam. Let Peter and me do this. This was our fight first.”

  She left the other reason she wanted to leave the general behind as their watcher carefully unspoken. No matter how Peter tried to dress it up, what he’d proposed was actually a lot closer to kidnapping than to any recognized form of lawful arrest. If things went wrong, she wanted to build as big a firewall between Louisa Farrell’s good-hearted husband and their actions as she possibly could.

  Farrell looked down at the ground for several seconds before raising his eyes to meet theirs again. “All right, I’ll stay put and keep watch.” He handed over his pistol and nodded toward Mcdowell.

  “What about this little shit? Does he stay with me, or go with you?”

  “He comes with us,” Helen heard herself say tightly. She glared at her nemesis. “I want to be right there when Mr. Mcdowell meets his real employer face-to-face for the first time.”

  Mcdowell turned even paler.

  JUNE 18

  Just Off Route 50, Near Middleburg, Virginia (D MINUS 3)

  It was nearly one in the morning. Despite the hour, Reichardt sat rigidly upright in the front passeng
er seat of his Caraco owned Chrysler Lebaron. He stared out at the blackened landscape blurring past without seeing any of it — not the dark masses of trees stabbing up toward the star-speckled night sky, or the occasional, isolated flicker of light that marked a human habitation.

  Ostensibly, Ibrahim had summoned him to Middleburg for a conference to discuss minor revisions to the Operation. In reality, Reichardt knew the Saudi prince wanted to vent his displeasure over his failure to trap and eliminate the four Americans — Thorn, Gray, Farrell, and Mcdowell — as promised.

  Mcdowell. The German felt his jaw tighten. The FBI traitor had obviously tipped his hand somehow.

  Reichardt grimaced. He’d thought about eliminating Mcdowell earlier but he’d needed the information given him by the American to keep track of Thorn and Gray. And now that had all gone wrong. Perhaps he’d made a mistake in allowing Mcdowell to live this long.

  Johann Brandt, his closest aide and bodyguard, spun the wheel, turning onto the narrow, two-lane road that eventually ran past Ibrahim al Saud’s sprawling Virginia estate. The road wound up and down over a chain of gentle, rolling hills and then cut through a dense, dark stretch of forest.

  “We’re being followed, sir,” Brandt said suddenly, with a quick glance at the rearview mirror.

  Reichardt felt that shiver run down his spine again. Too many of his carefully laid plans had gone astray these past few days. He was beginning to lose faith in his own cunning and powers of calculation.

  “Are you sure?” he demanded.

  Brandt nodded. “It’s the same car. It turned off the highway after us. And now it’s drawing closer.”

  Reichardt had noticed the headlights behind them gleaming in the sideview mirrors from time to time, but he’d discounted them. Many of the high-priced lawyers, lobbyists, and corporate executives who made their homes in this area were famed for working inhumanly late hours.

  “How far are we from the estate?” he asked.

  “Four or five miles.”

  Too far. Reichardt craned his head around, trying to catch a glimpse of the car that was following them. Nothing. Just the glare of the headlights. He narrowed his eyes against the dazzling light.