Trade-Off

by Trade-Off (retail) (epub)

  The Director paused.

  ‘No,’ he said, in reply to a question from Myers. ‘I’m not speaking under duress. I’ve reached an agreement with these two men, and I’ve guaranteed them full immunity. Is that clearly understood? No duress, and full immunity as long as their conditions are met.’

  Donahue terminated the call and handed the phone back to Hunter.

  ‘OK, Dick,’ Hunter said to Reilly, re-locking Donahue’s handcuff. ‘Let’s roll.’

  FBI Headquarters, J. Edgar Hoover Building, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.

  Myers slammed the phone down and ran through into his own office. He stopped in front of his safe and spun the combination wheel to open it. He missed the third digit on the first attempt and had to start over again. The second time he tried it the door swung open. Myers reached inside, pulled out a slim red file, opened it and walked to his desk. The title of the file was ‘Bear Trap.’

  He scanned swiftly through the code-words listed on a page on the left hand side of the file, running his finger down them until he reached ‘duress.’ He read the entry opposite the word, scanned down the page to read the entry opposite ‘immunity,’ then slapped the file shut and reached for the telephone.

  Two minutes later William McGrath walked into Myers’s office.

  ‘I’ve just heard from the Director,’ Myers said. ‘He’s coming back to the building with Hunter and Reilly. He used the code-words ‘duress’ and ‘immunity’ twice during the call. They decode simply enough. The suspects are armed and highly dangerous, and he wants them taken out without warning at the first opportunity.’

  Virginia

  Six minutes after Donahue had finished the call they reached the outskirts of Burke. Reilly slowed down, then turned off the main road into the side streets.

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘you know what to look for.’

  Hunter nodded agreement. Two minutes later he pointed at a building on the opposite side of the road: the sign above the shop doorway read ‘Harvey’s Rod & Gun.’ Reilly slowed down, pulled smoothly to the curb, and switched off the engine.

  ‘What’s going on now?’ Donahue demanded.

  ‘It’s like this,’ Hunter said. ‘Sheriff Reilly here doesn’t really trust you. He thinks you’re going to double-cross us the first chance you get, so he wants to organize some insurance.

  Donahue relaxed slightly in his seat. ‘What kind of insurance?’

  ‘Just hope you don’t get to find out,’ Hunter said. ‘OK, Dick, watch him.’

  Hunter got out of the car, looked both ways, then crossed the street. He pushed open the shop door and walked inside. There were no customers. The man behind the counter was big and broad, and didn’t look like he smiled a lot.

  ‘Yes, sir?’ he asked. ‘You’re going to have to be real quick – I’m just closing up.’

  Hunter pulled out Wilson’s FBI identification and showed it. ‘This is just a routine enquiry, Mr. Harvey,’ Hunter said, hoping his American accent sounded fairly convincing.

  ‘I ain’t Harvey,’ the man said. ‘I just work here. My name’s George Wright.’

  ‘Sorry, Mr. Wright. As I said, it’s a routine enquiry into recent sales of explosives in this area. Do you hold stocks of any kind of explosive on the premises?’

  Wright nodded. ‘Sure we do. A lot of guys these days prefer to load their own ammo. We carry black powder, slow- and fast-burning smokeless, and just about anything else you can use.’

  ‘OK. What about sales? Have there been any larger than usual sales of powder of any sort within the last month?’

  ‘I dunno,’ Wright said. ‘I’ll need to check.’

  ‘Please do,’ Hunter replied.

  Wright reached up to a shelf behind him and pulled down a blue-bound ledger, which he opened on the counter. He ran his finger down the columns of names and figures, then shut the ledger with a slap and replaced it on the shelf.

  ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary.’

  ‘So what sort of stock level have you got at the moment?’ Hunter asked.

  Wright rubbed a large hand over the stubble on his chin. ‘I guess about seventy or eighty pounds, tops. What’s all this about?’

  ‘It’s just a routine enquiry, Mr. Wright. Now, can you show me where you keep the powder?’

  Wright nodded and led the way behind the counter and down a corridor to a room secured with a steel-barred door. He pulled a bunch of keys from his pocket, unlocked the door, swung it open and walked inside. Hunter peered in. The room was lined with shelves on which stood drums of powder of various sorts.

  ‘You work here alone, Mr. Wright?’ Hunter asked, looking around the shelves.

  ‘Yup, but I’m only here Monday to Thursday. Friday and Saturday Harvey comes in and runs the place while he checks the books.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Hunter said, pulled out his Glock and levelled it at Wright’s ample stomach. ‘In the corner, please, Mr. Wright.’

  ‘What in hell d’you think you’re doing?’ Wright spluttered.

  Hunter shrugged. ‘I’m sorry about this, but I need to take some of your powder and some other stuff, and I really don’t have time to argue about it.’

  Still covering Wright, Hunter picked up a five pound drum of powder and put it outside the door of the storeroom. He repeated the action three times, which netted him twenty pounds weight of powder in all, then closed and locked the door on Wright.

  ‘Sorry about the accommodation,’ Hunter said, as he pulled the door to, ‘but Harvey will be along in twelve hours or so to let you out. I’ll lock up when I leave.’

  ‘You’re no goddamn FBI agent,’ Wright snarled.

  ‘Oddly enough,’ Hunter said, his English accent re-asserting itself. ‘I am, sort of, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a long-term career for me.’

  He holstered the Glock, walked back into the shop, locked the door and snapped the ‘closed’ sign into place. Then he walked round the store and completed his shopping list. He selected two polystyrene heads which were modelling camouflage caps, two dark coloured hunting jackets, six oblong steel plates used for manufacturing bullet traps, several feet of insulated wire, a roll of insulating tape, a gas-powered soldering iron and solder, two rubber bungees, and a handful of flashlight batteries. Then he opened his wallet, pulled out two hundred dollars in twenty dollar bills and left them on the counter top.

  Six minutes later all the items were in the Ford’s trunk and Reilly was driving away from the store.

  FBI Headquarters, J. Edgar Hoover Building, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.

  The phone on Myers’s desk rang and he snatched it up immediately. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Everything is in place in the building, sir. The estimate from the outside teams is thirty minutes, tops, before every approach is covered. We’ll get the Avenue closed off by the DC police fifteen minutes before the deadline.’

  As well as snipers in FBI Headquarters, the Bear Trap operational plan also specified five more sniper teams located inside, and on the roofs of, adjacent buildings, and these always took longer to deploy.

  ‘OK,’ Myers said. ‘Stay alert, and call me when all the teams are in position. I’ll be down well before the Director’s due to get here.’

  Virginia

  Reilly stopped the Ford on a deserted track off a quiet lane a few miles outside Burke, and turned round to look at Donahue.

  ‘This bit’s kinda complicated,’ he said, ‘and we don’t want anythin’ to go wrong, so you’d best get out.’

  He waggled his pistol to emphasize the point. Donahue looked at Hunter, who nodded agreement. Hunter released the handcuff from the Ford’s elbow rest, led Donahue over to a sapling, and snapped the handcuff around its trunk.

  A little under an hour later Reilly and Hunter stood back to admire their handiwork. In the back seat of the Ford were two dark silhouettes. Each was formed from three steel plates held together in a rough pyramid by one of the bungees, at the a
pex of which was perched one of the polystyrene heads, and each had a jacket draped around it, the shoulders supported on short branches pulled out of the undergrowth and cut to length. The central core of each comprised ten pounds weight of powder in two drums, lashed together with wire, and with a rudimentary detonator inside each.

  Making the detonators had taken the longest. Hunter had experimented, and the best he had been able to come up with was a single strand of wire which, when connected to the batteries he had taken from the gun store, burnt out immediately with a satisfying flare of light and heat.

  The batteries were taped together, and Hunter had soldered pieces of wire to link their terminals in parallel. From the terminals two lengths of insulated wire extended. One wasn’t attached to anything, but lay coiled on the rear seat. To arm the device Hunter would attach it to another length of wire already soldered to the steel plate lying against the back of the rear seat of the Ford. The other battery terminal was attached to the wire which connected one side of the two detonators. The wire which comprised the other terminal of the two detonators was soldered to each of the other two steel plates.

  The steel plates were kept separated by the polystyrene head. If it were removed with the device armed, the steel plates would touch, the battery circuit would be completed and the detonator would ignite the powder. That, at least, was Hunter’s plan.

  From close range it was perfectly obvious what the silhouettes were, but from anything over twenty yards, they looked surprisingly life-like.

  Donahue had watched the work with increasing incomprehension, and called out to Hunter when he walked away from the car.

  ‘What the hell are those contraptions supposed to be?’

  ‘Those,’ Hunter said, as he led Donahue back to the front seat of the Ford and shackled both of his wrists to the dashboard grab handle, ‘are our insurance policy. Just pray you don’t get to see how they work.’

  Groom Lake Air Force Base, Nevada

  The machinery finally stopped at a little after seven thirty, local time. Roger Ketch knew the exact time it stopped because his computer told him. He had just completed inputting the identities of the latest batch of subjects into the system database when a dialogue box popped up in the centre of his screen. The box was headed ‘Processing Status,’ and the label underneath announced, with extreme brevity, ‘Completed – 1932.’

  Ketch moved his mouse pointer to the ‘OK’ button and acknowledged the message. Then he entered the time in the correct box in the database and closed the program.

  He turned back to the notepad in the centre of his desk, glanced at his watch and reached for the telephone. Surely the idiots at Pennsylvania Avenue would have some news by now.

  Washington, D.C.

  On the southern outskirts of the District Capital, Reilly slowed the Ford down and then pulled into a parking lot. Hunter looked left and right and then gestured to Reilly to stop. He climbed out and walked across to a dark blue Lincoln with New York plates. The car had a thin layer of dust on the roof.

  From his inside pocket Hunter pulled out a thin flexible length of flat steel which Dick Reilly had given him. Known in the trade as a ‘Slim Jim,’ it could open almost any car door.

  Hunter slid the length of steel down into the inside of the door, between the rubber seal and the window glass, and felt for the door catch. The hook on the end made contact, and Hunter pulled upwards. There was a click, and Hunter saw the door catch lift. He looked round him, pulled the Slim Jim out and opened the door.

  Sitting in the driver’s seat, Hunter pulled a fat bunch of keys from his pocket – another thing Reilly had supplied. In other circumstances, Hunter would have been curious about, and maybe even curious enough to investigate, Reilly’s criminal talents. As it was, he was just grateful. He pushed a key into the ignition and tried to turn it. Nothing happened, and the second and third keys also failed to work. The fourth one turned easily, the ignition lights came on, and in seconds the Lincoln’s engine was running.

  Hunter gestured over at Reilly, who grinned at him through the windshield of the Ford, and the two cars moved out of the parking lot in convoy.

  Ten minutes later, the Ford and Lincoln were parked one behind the other at the curb, engines idling, in a back street less than a mile from Pennsylvania Avenue.

  FBI Headquarters, J. Edgar Hoover Building, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.

  Myers looked at his desk clock, stood up and left his office. Three minutes later he walked into the foyer of the building, peered out at the uncannily empty Pennsylvania Avenue with a satisfied expression, pulled out a secure-speech two-way radio and spoke into it.

  ‘This is Goldcrest,’ Myers said, using the call-sign specified in the Bear Trap file. ‘Rooftop sniper team, check in.’

  ‘Sniper One.’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘Second floor team, check in.’

  Calling the roll took just under two minutes. The FBI Headquarters had three six-man sniper teams deployed, one on the roof, the others in first and second floor offices, to cover Pennsylvania Avenue. The other five sniper teams were deployed and ready in nearby buildings. Myers left the radio on standby, and pushed it into his inside jacket pocket. All they could do now was wait.

  Washington, D.C.

  ‘OK, Director Donahue,’ Hunter said. ‘This is where we find out just how reliable your word of honour really is.’

  Hunter had slid into the back seat of the Ford, taking care not to disturb either of the two dummies. He hadn’t connected the batteries, but he didn’t want to have to start re-arranging the plates or anything else.

  ‘You’ll be driving, and you’d better remember you’ve got two really nervous passengers back here.’

  Reilly climbed out of the driver’s seat, walked round to the passenger door, leaned in and unlocked Donahue’s handcuffs.

  Hunter gestured with his Glock for Donahue to slide across the seat and sit behind the steering wheel. When the Director was seated, Reilly snapped one set of handcuffs on each wrist and attached the other cuffs to the rim of the steering wheel.

  ‘How the hell do you expect me to drive like this?’ Donahue demanded.

  ‘It ain’t far,’ Reilly snapped. ‘Reckon you’ll manage.’

  ‘Now, Director,’ Hunter said. ‘Let me just tell you what’s going to happen. You called your people and told them you were bringing us in. You also told them that you’d agreed to give us full immunity.’

  Donahue nodded. ‘Yes. So what’s your point?’

  ‘Dick Reilly doesn’t trust you to keep your word. He thinks you’ll try and double-cross us, which is why we’re not going to be in the car with you. But we don’t want you to feel lonely, and we don’t want your people on Pennsylvania Avenue to be disappointed, which is why we’ve spent so long rigging up these two passengers for you.’ Hunter gestured towards the back seat.

  ‘What we’re going to do is really simple. We’re going to follow you in the Lincoln and watch you drive up to FBI Headquarters. If nothing happens, and you stop the car outside, and your people let you out, then that’s good. We’ll drive up in the Lincoln and give ourselves up. So,’ Hunter concluded, looking straight at Donahue, ‘if you haven’t arranged any little surprises, everything should work out really well.’

  Donahue matched his gaze, but a sheen of sweat started appearing on his forehead.

  ‘There’s no need for all this,’ he said. ‘I gave you my word.’

  ‘I know,’ Hunter said, ‘but I’ve only got this far by checking everything twice, so we’ll do it my way.’

  ‘Look,’ Donahue began, ‘I – ‘

  ‘Forget it,’ Reilly said, leaned over and stuck a length of tape roughly across Donahue’s mouth. ‘Time’s short. We wanna wrap this up.’

  Hunter reached into his pocket and pulled out a small ear-piece.

  ‘It’s part
of the hands-free kit for the mobile phone,’ he said to Donahue, ‘because we’ll need to keep in contact with you.’

  He put the ear-piece in the Director’s ear, clipped the microphone to his jacket lapel and attached the lead to his phone. Hunter nodded to Reilly, who dialled a number on his mobile. As soon as Hunter’s phone rang, he swiped to answer the call and slipped the phone into Donahue’s jacket pocket.

  ‘OK,’ Hunter said. ‘We’ll be following behind you, with Dick’s AR-15 assault rifle loaded, so it would be a real good idea if you didn’t take any turns we don’t expect. If you do deviate from the route, we’ll detonate the bombs with the rifle. One shot should do it.’

  Reilly used the butt of his pistol to break the glass in both the exterior mirrors, then walked back to the Lincoln. Hunter reached up and snapped off the Ford’s interior mirror, then reached into the back seat and twisted the wires together to connect the two battery packs.

  ‘The bombs are now armed,’ he said, ‘so you’d best drive really slowly and really carefully.’

  Hunter glanced back at Reilly, who nodded and climbed into the driver’s seat of the Lincoln. The Englishman took a last look around the street, then leaned forward through the driving window of the Ford.

  ‘It’s time. Stick to the main road, and remember we’ll be behind you. Without the mirrors you won’t see us, but you’ll hear us through the mobile.’

  Donahue’s eyes rolled wildly and his hands clutched convulsively at the steering wheel. Hunter looked down at him, something like pity in his eyes.

  ‘Just drive,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘We’ve all got to take our chances sometime.’