Day of Wrath

by Larry Bond

  Still tearful, though with relief now and not sorrow, she’d managed to bundle Peter into the back seat of Wolf’s Chrysler, pat down the body of the driver for any more evidence, and then head back to pick up Farrell outside Caraco’s Chantilly complex.

  Pressed for time, she’d been forced to leave Mcdowell’s bulletriddled Ford parked out in the open on the shoulder.

  Helen had hated to do that. The abandoned car would act as a beacon to the next passing patrol can-signaling that something very wrong had happened along that isolated stretch of road. More to the point, their fingerprints were all over the car, and even a cursory check of the government-issue plates would reveal it had been signed out to FBI Deputy Assistant Director Lawrence Mcdowell — now missing.

  Not good, she thought grimly. Not good at all.

  Helen checked her watch. It was after eleven in the morning.

  By now, there might very easily be an APB out for the three of them.

  And the charges against them could range from kidnapping to murder.

  Somehow, in the space of just a few days, she and Peter had managed to push the punishments they were facing from likely administrative reprimands to possible imprisonment, and now maybe even the death penalty.

  She shook her head in dismay. It was best to focus on the immediate future. For the moment they were free and still in a position to try something — anything — to stop whatever Heinrich Wolf and his employer, Ibrahim, had planned.

  The hours since their abortive attempt to capture Wolf had passed in a dizzying blur. After a quick cleanup in the rest room of a large, busy gas station, she, Peter, and Farrell had found an out-of-the way residential street and abandoned the Chrysler.

  With luck, it might be days before the neighbors compared notes and discovered it didn’t belong to a visitor or anyone local.

  Next, they’d phoned a cab and checked into this plain, clean, and relatively inexpensive motel. Close to the Beltway, the motor lodge mostly catered to truckers, traveling salesmen, and economy-minded vacationers touring the nation’s capital. It offered privacy, easy access to the local road and highway network, and effective anonymity to anyone paying cash.

  After a short rest, Farrell had left a couple of hours ago on a hurried shopping expedition.

  Someone knocked on the door — softly but urgently.

  Helen waved Peter down and checked the peephole. It was Sam Farrell.

  He bustled in, set a large plastic bag down on the nearest bed, and displayed a set of rental car keys. “Okay! We’re mobile again.”

  Helen read the tag. “A white Oldsmobile Ciera?” She tried hard to match his determinedly cheerful mood. “Not a brandnew, 007-type BMW? Hardly our style, Sam …”

  Farrell grinned. “I know, I know — dull, boring. But there’s a zillion of ‘em out on the road. We’ll blend right in with everyone else in the metro area.

  “I also got this.” He pulled a bulging manila envelope out of the shopping bag, opened the flap, and dumped several thick stacks of twenty-dollar bills onto the bed. “There’s somewhere around five thousand dollars there. I cleaned out one of my savings accounts.”

  “Jesus, Sam,” Peter said, looking down at the money. “Your wife will kill you when she finds out about this.”

  “Not with an IOU from you in hand,” Farrell reminded him.

  “Louisa trusts you, Pete. It’s her one big blind spot. Anyway, we need the money right now.”

  That was certainly true, Helen knew. Neither she nor Peter dared use their own credit or ATM cards, and their earlier travels had pretty well depleted their own cash reserves. And, unless the police or the FBI nailed them in the next few hours, they were sure to need money and lots of it.

  She tapped the still-bulging shopping bag. “So, what’s left, Sam?”

  “This,” Farrell said. He handed her a massive hardcover German-English/English-German dictionary.

  “Perfect.”

  Helen led Peter and Farrell over to the small circular table where she’d sorted out the possessions she’d collected from the three dead men — Wolf, his driver, Brandt, and Mcdowell. She’d swept Mcdowell’s into a separate bag for later disposal. What struck her about the other two men was the complete lack of commonplace personal items.

  Their wallets contained only some cash and one credit card apiece — both tied to a Caraco corporate account. There were no dry cleaning receipts, no shopping lists, no photos of their wives or kids.

  Both Wolf and Brandt were “clean”—covert operations jargon meaning neither had carried anything that might contradict their cover identities.

  Which left just two interesting items. Brandt had apparently been more than just a simple driver and bodyguard for his boss.

  He’d been carrying a fat, leather-bound appointment book. And Helen had found Heinrich Wolf’s blood-soaked briefcase under his still-warm body.

  Naturally, all the notations in both the appointment book and in the papers inside the briefcase were in German. Hence the hardcover monstrosity Sam Farrell had just handed her.

  Farrell took one look at the small table and shook his head.

  “Two’s company, three’s a crowd-especially when you’ve only got one dictionary. You two take the first whack at this stuff. I’ll take a gander at the TV and see if there’s anything on about a shoot-out near Middleburg.”

  “Nothing on the local news yet?” Peter asked.

  Farrell shrugged. “Not a peep. And that makes me kinda nervous.”’

  Helen nodded silently. The Loudoun County sheriffs must have found Mcdowell’s abandoned car by now — which probably meant the Bureau’s higher-ups were stonewalling all inquiries from local law enforcement while they tried to sort out just what the hell was going on.

  She laid the German-English dictionary in the middle of the table, sat down, and slid the appointment book across to Peter.

  Then she flipped open Wolf’s briefcase. Aside from a few business cards, there were only two folded pieces of paper that struck her as significant.

  The first was a list headed “Flugzeug Piloten Ankunftszeiten.”

  Which meant “Pilots-Arrival Times,” according to her best guess and some rapid flipping through the dictionary. Today’s date, “18 Juni,” appeared at the very top in crisp, neat Germanic handwriting. It was followed by a series of four airline names, flight numbers, and times — with the phrase “nach Dulles” circled to one side.

  Several minutes on the phone with various airlines while Peter snagged the dictionary for his own rough translations elicited the information that Wolf had pilots arriving at Dulles on flights originating from Charleston, Los Angeles, Oklahoma City, and Seattle.

  Helen didn’t like even the vague picture she saw emerging.

  Caraco’s operation involved aircraft in some fashion — and more than one plane, too. Had the pilots now arriving in the D.C. area been used to ferry Ibrahim’s smuggled cargo into those four cities?

  Oh, hell. Her blood ran cold. They’d been assuming they were chasing after one stolen nuclear weapon. What if there were more?

  There was a second note on the same sheet, “Drei zusaetzlichen Wache von Deutschland nach JFK Flughafen.” Three cities — Los Angeles, Charleston, and Washington, D.C. — were listed below with an arrow pointing to each. More flipping to and fro in the dictionary supplied the information that Wolf had ordered three additional guards deployed from Germany through JFK International in New York to unnamed locations in each of those three cities.

  And the word “additional” implied that he already had forces stationed at those locations. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

  The second sheet didn’t have a heading — just a set of what looked like five underlined place names with other words beneath them. She studied the first set:

  Berkeley Adler Fuchs Katze Baeren Hase Eagle, Fox, Cat, Bear, and Hare. All were clearly code names of some kind, Helen decided. But code names for what? For people?

  For places? Stages in Wo
lf’s operation? “Katze” had been crossed out and the German word for cow, “Kuh,” had been written in beside it — with a further notation, “Wetter,” or weather.

  There were more animal code words beneath each of the other four underlined locations five more under two, three under a third, and two under the last. A total of twenty then. With one more code word crossed out and another substituted — this one with the German words “Eine Obung,” or “an exercise,” as an explanatory note.

  Helen frowned. Without more than this, it was going to be impossible to decipher much about Ibrahim’s real intentions. She showed the second sheet to Peter and Farrell. “Can either of you guys make heads or tails out of this stuff?”

  The two men studied it for a few seconds.

  Peter read the apparent place names out loud. “Berkeley. Godfrey. Page. Nampa. And Shafter-Minter.” He raised an eyebrow.

  “Sounds like a bunch of small towns. Or suburbs, maybe.”

  He flipped open the appointment book Brandt had carried and showed them one page after another. “I think that bastard Wolf may have visited all of those places over the past couple of weeks. He’s been flitting across the whole country on a Caraco corporate jet. See?” His finger stabbed each name as he read it out. “On June 11 he was in South Carolina. The next day, the twelfth, he was out in California — at this Shafter-Minter place.”

  Helen glanced ahead at the listing for June 13. Her eyes widened.

  “Look where he went next … Galveston.”

  Peter nodded. “Yeah. No wonder the FBI didn’t find anything in that warehouse. The son of a bitch was a step ahead of us all the way.”

  “True. But we’re still left in the goddamned dark about exactly what’s going on here,” Farrell pointed out. He shook his head.

  “Let me check out these towns or whatever they are at the local library. I’ll see if I can dig anything up about them that would appeal to a nasty piece of work like Wolf.”

  “How are you planning to do that, Sam?” Helen asked. “Guide books?

  Atlases? It’ll take you hours.” Still jotting the place names onto a piece of scrap paper, Farrell grinned back at her. “Helen, someday you and Pete are gonna have to spend less time learning how to kill people and more time dragging yourselves into the modern age.” He waggled a finger.

  “All I need to do is find the nearest computer connected to the Internet, input this stuff, do a little word search, filter out the meaningless garbage, and bingo, I’ve got my data.”

  Middleburg, Virginia (D MINUS 3)

  Out of the corner of his eye, Prince Ibrahim al Saud saw his chief of security, Talal, appear at the door to his study. At a glance, the former Saudi paratroop captain stopped motionless and stood silently, waiting for permission to speak.

  With a superficial calm he no longer felt inwardly, Ibrahim finished his prayers, carefully rolled up the prayer mat, and rose to his feet.

  It was ordinarily his custom to lead the five daily prayers of all the faithful in his household, but the press of events had forced him into these less fulfilling private observances.

  It was a pity, but he felt confident God would understand his need.

  He crooked a finger at Talal.

  The man stepped closer and stiffened to attention. “Highness.”

  Ibrahim crossed to his desk and sat down. “Yes, Captain.”

  “There is still no sign of Herr Reichardt, Highness. Or of the American, Mcdowell.”

  Ibrahim frowned. When Reichardt hadn’t shown up on time for their scheduled meeting, he’d immediately dispatched Talal and a section of his security force to backtrack along the route the German would have taken. To his dismay, they’d found only an empty, abandoned car pockmarked with bullet holes — a car with U.S. government-issued license plates. A car that had been assigned to Reichardt’s mole inside the FBI–Lawrence Mcdowell.

  Minutes later, his men had discovered the corpse of Johann Brandt just inside the forest. But both Reichardt and Mcdowell were gone. The German’s corporate car had also vanished without a trace.

  Determined not to draw any further official attention to his activities, Ibrahim had ordered Talal to bring both Brandt’s body and the missing FBI man’s Ford back to the estate — where they could be disposed of without awkward questions from the authorities.

  It didn’t require much imagination to piece together what must have happened. Somehow the two Americans, Thorn and that woman Gray, had turned the tables on Reichardt. Somehow the predator had become the prey.

  Ibrahim scowled. He had cautioned the German before against overconfidence. Evidently, his warnings had fallen on deaf ears.

  What troubled him most was the possibility that Thorn and Gray might have taken Reichardt alive. That would greatly complicate his plans.

  He didn’t believe the ex-Stasi officer would break under questioning, but he could not be absolutely sure. For an instant, Ibrahim became disoriented — his mind casting up images of American agents appearing in force outside his gates, destroying the grand scheme he had worked so hard and spent so much to prepare.

  Be still, he told himself. What will be, will be. So far the Americans show no signs that they are aware of their imminent peril.

  If Reichardt were alive and in Thorn and Gray’s hands, he had not yet betrayed his master.

  Of course, there were also the documents the other man would have carried on his person. The German was often circumspect, prone to wrapping even the most basic information in a concealing layer of code, but even vague references might provide the two Americans with more details about the Operation. And they already knew far too much.

  Talal’s quiet, deferential voice broke in on his thoughts.

  “Should I report the Chrysler stolen, Highness? Perhaps the American police could do some of this work for us?”

  “No.” Ibrahim shook his head forcefully. “We would need to explain the circumstances of the car’s disappearance. For now we shall let sleeping dogs lie.”

  He sighed. “In any case, I am quite sure that Colonel Thorn is no longer anywhere near Herr Reichardt’s vehicle. He could not have survived this long by behaving stupidly.”

  Ibrahim stood up suddenly. The hours were flying by. Whether Reichardt were alive or dead, the German’s abrupt disappearance so close to the end had thrown sand into the Operation’s once smoothly turning gears. There were decisions to be made — and now only he could make them.

  “Captain Talal,” he snapped.

  “Highness!”

  “Instruct the staff to continue packing. Then organize and equip a four-man squad of your best troops as an escort. I’m going to the Chantilly facility. You will accompany me. Understood?”

  Talal nodded hurriedly.

  Ibrahim would learn from Reichardt’s mistakes. If Thorn and Gray wanted to come after him on the road to Chantilly, so be it. They would be met by overwhelming firepower.

  Outside Leesburg, Virginia

  A little more than thirty miles west and slightly north of Washington, Sam Farrell turned south off the highway onto a narrow, two-lane blacktop road. The area around them had once been predominantly rural — a stretch of green hills and fertile farmland.

  Now, though, the District was pushing its urban tentacles up Route 7, the old Leesburg Turnpike of Civil War fame. A few scattered farms still held out, but most had fallen prey to new housing developments and gleaming corporate buildings. Light industry lined both sides of the road now — and the scars of new construction in the green fields showed where still more houses and shopping malls would soon rise.

  Colonel Peter Thorn leaned forward from the back seat, squinting as the early afternoon sun poured in from the west. His head still ached, despite Helen’s soothing ministrations. “You mind telling me where you’re taking us, Sam? Fun’s fun, but we’ve been on the road for a while now.”

  Farrell raised his eyes to the rearview mirror. He smiled crookedly.

  “You just can’t stand secre
ts, can you, Pete?”

  “Not really,” Thorn admitted.

  Farrell turned their rented Ciera off the blacktop road and into a parking lot about half the size of that of any typical supermarket.

  He pointed toward the single asphalt runway just visible behind a pair of buildings. “Welcome to Godfrey Field, aka the Leesburg Municipal Airport.”

  “An airport?” Thorn heard Helen ask. He scanned the five long rows of private planes tied down just left of the parking lot.

  Most were small — single-engine two-, four-, and six-seaters.

  “Yep. They’re all airports,” Farrell said. “From Berkeley, South Carolina, to Nampa, Idaho, to Page, Oklahoma, all the way to Shafter-Minter out in California. It took some work to narrow my search down to exactly what linked those names, but that’s it — that’s the common denominator.”

  “And they’re all this size?” Thorn asked, eyeing a line of hangars beyond the airpark — three pairs paralleling the road.

  The path between the two nearest buildings, one a two story FAA office, the other a small flight school, was the quickest way out onto the runway. No metal detectors. No boarding areas. No jetways. No security.

  “On the nose, Pete,” Farrell said. “All five are pint-size municipal or regional airports — but all of them are reasonably close to larger urban centers: Los Angeles, Charleston, Boise, Oklahoma City, and D.C.”

  “My God,” Helen said. She turned toward them. “There were five Su-24 engines in that last shipment from Kandalaksha.”

  Thorn saw it at almost the same moment. He felt cold despite the sticky heat rolling in through the car’s open windows. “Then Caraco has five nukes.”

  “Five airfields. Five bombs. Five cities,” Farrell concluded grimly.

  A bleak expression settled on his face, and, for the first time Thorn could remember, his former commander looked close to his real age.

  “But why use aircraft?” Helen asked, clearly desperate to poke holes in their story. “Why not just put a bomb in a truck, drive it into the center of town, and hit the switch? That would be simpler and cheaper.”