Run for Cover

by Michael Ledwidge

  Which was why they were at the airport. Kit was on a three o’clock Delta flight into Baltimore to meet up with the New York office team to drop the hammer.

  “You sure about all of this?” Gannon said, wincing as her flight was called.

  “I’m positive,” Kit said, grabbing up her new carry-on.

  John Barber stood.

  “Here, Kit. I got you a going-away present,” Barber said, offering her a plastic bag.

  She reached inside of it and took out what looked like an old iPhone.

  “Why, John, an old phone,” Kit said. “You shouldn’t have.”

  “It’s actually a souvenir from my time in military intelligence,” he said. “See the bottom here? The little thing that looks like a button? It’s not a button. That’s the receiver you point. You press this switch here, it’ll work as a shotgun microphone. You press this one here, it’ll pick up a cell phone conversation or any other radio signal you point it at. It eats battery like crazy so I included the charger. Downside is you have to be pretty close. A hundred yards is about the max range and you have a clear line of sight. Otherwise it’ll get scrambled with other signals.”

  “Got it. Thanks, John, but this is for...?” Kit said.

  He shrugged.

  “Who knows? Might come in handy where you’re headed.”

  “This isn’t legal, John, is it?” she said.

  “Not in any way, shape or form,” he said with a grin.

  He stepped away as Gannon came over. He had his hand behind his back.

  “I got you a going-away present, too,” he said as he handed her the Twix he’d bought at the 7-Eleven.

  “Twix,” she said with a laugh. “Who doesn’t love Twix?”

  He gave her a hug goodbye.

  “Listen, Kit,” he said, holding her for a second more. “I know what you said about these new friends of yours, but be careful. That Dawn Warner gets wind of your little plan, you know she’ll be coming for you with her flying monkeys. Trust no one.”

  “Except you, you mean,” Kit said in his ear.

  “Now you’re finally getting with the program,” Gannon said as he winked and squeezed her wrist and finally let her go.

  89

  After Kit left, Gannon and John Barber got back into Gannon’s pickup truck in the airport parking lot.

  “Hold up there a second, would you, Mike?” Barber said, slipping a square of paper out of his jacket pocket.

  Gannon looked down at the photograph. It was of several men smiling for the camera in front of the porch of a dusty old brick house. They were bristling with tactical gear, rifles on straps, and some of them wore goggles and earmuffs.

  “Hey, wait, that’s your shoothouse.”

  “Why, yes, it is. Let me ask you. Who does this fella remind you of?” Barber said, pointing.

  “No,” Gannon said shaking his head. “Come on. What the hell?”

  There was no mistaking it. The hooded eyes, the arrogant expression. In the photo’s top right-hand corner was the shooter from the Denver parking garage shoot-out that Kit had shown them. Or it was his twin brother.

  “You know the Euro weenie?” Gannon said.

  “I spent a week training him two years ago. He came through with some heavy-duty government contractor types who wanted to use the shoothouse to run simulations. I thought it was him straight off when Kit showed us. But I asked around the grapevine. I needed to double-check.”

  “You know his name?”

  Barber nodded.

  “Not only that,” he said. “I know where he lives.”

  Gannon smiled.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Clarence Westergaard.”

  “Clarence? Wow,” Gannon said. “His parents should be charged with cruel and unusual punishment. What is he? Dutch?”

  “South-African-born but moved to Munich in his teens before he joined up with the KSK.”

  “Hmmm. Clarence German-commando-trained Westergaard, huh? Very interesting, John. Let me guess. You’re leaving Kit out of the loop because you’re thinking maybe we should tackle this lead on our own? Maybe pay Clarence a visit. See what he’s up to? See if we can persuade him to own up to his transgressions?”

  “Had crossed my mind,” Barber said. “Kit’s certainly got enough on her plate tackling things with the Silicon Valley folks in DC.”

  “What’s Clarence’s address?”

  “Ventura, California,” Barber said. “We fly out of Moab at five in the morning.”

  Gannon looked over at his friend. How much it had to be weighing on him that he had probably helped train the son of a bitch who had killed his brother. How ripped up he had to be about it. How much he needed to personally set things straight.

  Then Gannon looked back down at Clarence in the picture and remembered the brick wall in Denver exploding a centimeter above his own head.

  “And if old Clarence doesn’t feel like being persuaded?” Gannon said.

  “Ah, don’t be so cynical, Mike,” Barber said, patting Gannon on the arm. “We’re creative people. You and me both know there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

  90

  Brady’s Ale House, one of the oldest Irish pubs in Baltimore, was in an old redbrick building with stone trim midway down the slope of East Pleasant Street downtown near the courthouses.

  Inside there were old whiskey barrels along the walls and red, white, and blue bunting above the hunter-green leather booths. On the old dusty wood-paneled walls above the booths hung yellowed photos of bare-fisted boxers and Charlie Chaplin movie posters and old liquor licenses in frames going back to the early 1900s.

  At nine thirty in the morning in one of its back rooms, Kit, straight from the airport hotel, stood in the glow of a neon beer sign. Standing around the rear of the barroom with her was the FBI New York office head, Bill Ferguson, a dozen New York office FBI agents and a federal district attorney.

  They were all standing before Bill’s brother, Federal District Judge Joseph P. Ferguson, who was sitting in one of the booths.

  On the old pinewood table where the judge sat was a half-full draft of Sam Adams lager, and beside that was a federal arrest warrant for Ethan Weber waiting for his signature.

  Kit looked about the room as they waited for the judge to silently absorb all that Kit had just presented to him.

  Her eyes locked onto a life-sized cigar-store-style wooden statue of Babe Ruth in the corner.

  Come on, Babe, she prayed as she looked into the great Bambino’s eyes. Help us convince Judge Joe.

  When Kit glanced over, the judge was still positioned exactly as his brother had sat him down in the booth half an hour before.

  With his arms crossed and with a very skeptical look on his face.

  As Kit watched, the judge lifted his beer and drained it. Then he re-crossed his arms.

  “That’s all you got?” he said.

  Kit rolled her eyes as everyone groaned.

  “All we got? Are you listening, Joe?” Bill Ferguson said. “That’s Weber’s wife dead on Grand Teton there. I showed you the park ranger’s video and the facial recognition pictures.”

  “Which are inadmissible.”

  “Who gives a care? They’re real. A two-year-old can see it’s the same woman. With his endless billions, this guy used a team of covert mercenaries to kill not just his wife but an FBI agent, a county sheriff, a park ranger, a stripper, and probably even a Wyoming boob doctor to cover it all up. We’ve got a kidnapping attempt on Kit here in Denver, and if that’s not enough, it looks like we’ve got a rogue Justice Department assistant AG quarterbacking this nonstop insanity.”

  “I know,” the judge said. “I’ve heard of Warner. She’s from the deepest end of the pool. She’s the one who scares me the most.”

  “You are a criminal l
aw judge, right, Joe?” Bill Ferguson said. “You prosecute crimes, right? Crimes like cold-blooded murder?”

  “Screw you, Bill. You didn’t have to go to law school, did you? No, you get to drive around free as a bird all day playing G-man while good old Dad made me follow in his footsteps into the courts.”

  “And that’s not even it in terms of evidence,” Bill Ferguson said. “We have a guard at the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base that positively ID’d three of the men who were at the Denver shoot-out. He puts them arriving there by Black Hawk helicopter right before Tracy Sandhurst was abducted and then taking off right after. We also have another of the shooters on a doorbell video near the house of Dr. Fletcher on the morning he supposedly committed suicide.”

  “Fletcher’s who again? The boob doctor guy?” the judge said.

  “Yes, Joe. The dead boob doctor guy,” Bill Ferguson said.

  “This seems like an intelligence thing,” Judge Joe said, shaking his head.

  “Who cares, Joe!” Bill Ferguson screamed. “It’s illegal! Killing American people is against the fricking law even if you’re in the CIA!”

  “It’s going to be a shitstorm.”

  “So what. Let it rain. Remember what Dad used to say? Let justice be done though the heavens fall. Remember?”

  “He’s right, Your Honor,” Kit said. “I don’t know about you, but covert military psycho killers flying around abducting American citizens and killing them to cover up for wife-murdering billionaire software developers isn’t a world I feel too comfortable living in.”

  “Exactly,” Bill Ferguson said. “If this isn’t shit you sign arrest warrants for, we need to hang a closed sign on the courthouse door. Who cares who we piss off? They shot Dennis. You loved Dennis. You owe him big-time! Get a spine.”

  “I’m going to be needing a new one probably,” Judge Joe said, not moving his crossed arms a centimeter. “What happens after I sign this? What’s the next step?”

  “Weber’s coming to Congress for a hearing about social media censorship at two,” Kit said. “We’re going over to Capitol Hill and we’ll arrest him as he’s coming in to testify.”

  “On the Capitol steps? It’ll be all over the news!”

  “Yes, we know. That’s the point, Joe. It’ll be the frog march to end all frog marches. Your brother’s cuffs here one day will end up in the Smithsonian along with that piece of paper in front of you. The Ferguson Brothers Save America! It’ll be a Broadway play. You’ll go down in history.”

  “A Broadway play,” Judge Joe spat. “We’ll go down all right but not in history.”

  “Fine, Joe,” Bill Ferguson said. “Fine. Forget it. Give me the warrant back. We’ll go to plan B.”

  “Plan B?” the judge said. “What’s that?”

  “I march over to Capitol Hill and when Weber gets out of the limo, I take out my gun and I avenge Dennis by blowing the son of a bitch’s brains out.”

  “Fine, you crazy son of a bitch,” Judge Joe said, taking out a pen. “Just fine. You satisfied, little brother? My career is done now, you know that. Hope Dee and the kids like the couch in Mom’s basement at the over fifty-five in Orlando.”

  “Cry me a river, Joe. Your house is as big as a Home Depot,” Bill Ferguson said as he picked up the document.

  Kit had experienced a lot of great feelings as an agent, but coming out of the dark of the beer-smelling bar into the bright morning light of Baltimore with the good men around her to arrest Ethan Weber took the prize far and away.

  “Thank you, Babe,” Kit said, patting the Sultan of Swat on his pin-striped shoulder as they all left.

  “We’re doing this, Dennis,” she whispered to her dead partner as she stared down the old-fashioned narrow street.

  She was piling into the back of Bill Ferguson’s lead Suburban when his phone rang.

  “What’s this? Hold way the hell up. I’m getting a text from my buddy. No, this can’t be happening.”

  “What?” Kit said panicked. “Weber’s gone? He fled the country?”

  “No,” Bill Ferguson said. “He’s still here. Right here. In fact, he’s waiting for us.”

  “What?”

  “Ethan Weber apparently just turned himself in. He’s over at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in DC.”

  91

  Despite a near constant headwind almost the whole way west, it took exactly four hours to land at the tiny Santa Paula Airport in Ventura County, California.

  Hertz had already sent over the Cadillac Escalade they had requested, and they piled in their bags and found Highway 126 and took it southwest. They saw the ocean for the first time when they got on the 101 Pacific Coast Highway north forty minutes later.

  When they got off at the next exit, they came over an overpass and parked at the deserted dead end of a road by the beach. Gannon, behind the wheel, flicked up the AC another notch as Barber unpacked the food his wife had made for them out of a blue cooler bag.

  “What did you tell Lynn we were doing anyway?” Gannon said as Barber handed him a plastic bottle of iced coffee along with a tin foil package. Gannon smiled as he saw the sesame seed bagel brimming with cream cheese.

  “Hunting,” Barber said.

  Gannon chuckled as he took a bite.

  “You tell her what we were hunting?”

  “Didn’t specify.”

  Gannon chuckled again.

  “Clever,” he said, munching. “John Barber and George Washington: the only two Americans who never told a lie.”

  After he had demolished his bagel, Gannon got out and chucked his napkins into a trash bin. He stood for a moment, stretching and gazing out at the water. The white break of waves along the curve of the inlet, the long pier on their right, the high desert hills drab-colored and rumpled in the haze beyond. A couple with a golden retriever was playing with a stick by the water’s edge, and their silhouettes were like something out of a love song music video from a more innocent time.

  When he came back, Gannon accepted the second coffee John Barber had already opened for him along with a binder. Inside of it were tactical maps and a blowup of a mission-style house with a Spanish tile roof and a pool.

  “This is up in the hill above the town, right?”

  “Uh-huh. This is a condo place in front of it,” Barber said, pointing at a yellow stucco building. “But it looks pretty private with this hedge.”

  They both looked up as a jogger went by on the sand, followed by a scraggly guy with a metal detector wand.

  John finished his coffee and burped loudly as he tossed the empty plastic bottle into the back seat.

  “Okay. You ready?” he said.

  “What? No goodies?” Gannon said.

  “Goodies?”

  “In Lynn’s bag there. You know, like pastries or cookies?”

  John Barber reached into the back seat and grabbed up a duffel bag and unzipped it in his lap. Inside of it was a cut-down M4 fully automatic carbine rifle along with some balaclavas and radios and similar bric-a-brac.

  “I got a goodie for you right here,” Barber said as he took out a brand-new Colt Gold Cup Series semiautomatic .45 and handed it over.

  Gannon took a look at it. The bright satin stainless finish. The black rubber grip crisp in his big hand.

  “I was thinking something more along the lines of a Yodel or an apple pie,” Gannon said as he tucked it into his shoulder holster. “But you know what, John? This will actually do.”

  They took side streets from the beach into Ventura town proper and made a right onto the hill up a wide palm-lined street. Gannon looked out at the soft California morning light on the pale stucco mission facades. There were bikes and surfboards in the windows of the pleasant old Spanish-tiled shops. They rolled past a funky coffee joint. Out in front of it, a dog slept lazily on the sidewalk beside a full-dress Harley.


  Part beach town, part art deco old Hollywood, Gannon thought. It looked expensive.

  “Nice little town, huh? Sleepy.”

  “Yeah, well,” John Barber said, folding his arms. The just-risen sun gleamed off the dark shade of his sunglasses.

  “It’s about to get woke the hell up in a second.”

  Two minutes later, they passed the yellow stucco condo and then Westergaard’s address without slowing. A few hundred feet up past it, they made a left into a public park with hiking trails and beautiful rolling hills covered in wildflowers.

  It took them ten minutes to park and hike up high on a secluded spot on the hill overlooking Westergaard’s house.

  They squatted low in the undergrowth, staring down. When Barber handed him the binoculars, he saw they had a good vista into most of the backyard lanai and pool.

  “Come out, come out wherever you are,” Barber said.

  “Can’t believe it’s actually come to this,” Gannon said, handing Barber back the glasses.

  “Come to what?” Barber said.

  “Doing sneak-and-peeks in our own damn country.”

  92

  “The damn puzzle palace. Just great,” Deputy Director Bill Ferguson said as they arrived before the white tomb-like J. Edgar Hoover Building.

  “That doesn’t sound very encouraging, Bill,” Kit said as they got out on 10th Street.

  “Have you ever been here before?” Ferguson said.

  “Just at graduation.”

  “Yeah, well,” Bill said as they stepped up onto the sidewalk. “The New York office is nothing like this. Nothing too good ever seems to happens here.”

  At the top of the stone steps, the side door was propped open. Three feet inside, there was a white-shirted veteran DC Capitol cop standing by the security desk. His arms were folded across his chest.

  “We’re—” Bill Ferguson said.

  “Oh, we know who you are,” the guard said coldly as he thumbed them for the elevator.

  The wiry bespectacled middle-aged female agent that met them on the other side of the elevator door on the seventh floor reminded Kit of the farmer’s wife in that famous painting. She looked bitter as burnt coffee, like a mean first-grade teacher who’d run out of students to put in the corner.