‘You’re the Acting Director. The speed the goddamn wheels turn in Washington it’ll be weeks before a new Director’s appointed, so I authorize you to read the Omega Procedures file. Just you. No-one else, not even Myers.’
Myers tried to look irritated, but was secretly pleased. He had a very, very strong feeling that he really didn’t want to know anything more than he had to about Omega.
‘How can you possibly authorize that?’ McGrath asked. ‘It’s an FBI file with the highest possible security classification.’
Ketch laughed again. ‘Of course I can authorize it,’ he said. ‘I wrote the fucking thing.’
Montgomery County, Virginia
It was almost midnight when Hunter finally spotted what he had been looking for.
‘This is it,’ he said, and directed Reilly to turn off the side road down a narrow track. Leaves and branches brushed the sides of the Lincoln as the car moved slowly over the rutted surface, which was marked by the tires of four-wheel-drive vehicles.
‘OK,’ Reilly said. ‘And where exactly is ‘this’?’
Hunter grinned at him. ‘It’s just a field with a building on it,’ he said.
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yup. A long, narrow field with a real big building on it.’
Comprehension dawned on Reilly. ‘An airstrip?’
Hunter nodded. ‘I learnt to fly when the Queen employed me – I was in the Royal Navy and ended up flying Sea Harriers. When I was training over at Quantico I got to know the owner of this place – a guy called Dave Charles. I got down here whenever I could and took a few spins in some of the aircraft he had here.’
‘He still around?’
‘Who?’
‘This Charles guy. You gonna persuade him to fly us out of here?’
Hunter shook his head. ‘Nope. I hope the aircraft are still here, but Dave should have gone home long before now. And he wouldn’t fly us out of here without filing a flight plan and all the rest of it.’
‘So what are we doing?’
Hunter looked at him. ‘The plan is for us to find the airfield deserted, for you to break into the hanger using whatever clever little devices you’ve got in that bag of yours, and for us to borrow an aircraft and get the hell out of here.’
‘I know I’ll regret askin’ this, but exactly who’ll be drivin’ the damn thing? You?’
Hunter grinned again, his teeth a white slash in the semi-darkness of the Lincoln. ‘Yup,’ he said. ‘That’ll be me.’
‘Jesus,’ Reilly muttered. ‘Kinda wish I stayed behind in Beaver Creek, or even D.C.’
FBI Headquarters, J. Edgar Hoover Building, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.
Ketch had been right. When William McGrath closed the Omega Procedures file some ninety minutes later, he knew exactly why Reilly and Hunter had to be found and killed. What he had read in the file and seen in the package of photographs and on the short video tape must never become public knowledge.
His face ashen, McGrath picked up the file, crossed his office to his personal safe, put the file inside and spun the combination wheel to lock it. Then he went into his bathroom to wash his hands. Even reading it had made him feel unclean, tainted. He was drying his hands when one of the images he’d seen swam into his mind again, and he spent the next eight minutes retching uncontrollably into the toilet.
Chapter Fourteen
Friday
Montgomery County, Virginia
It took Reilly only three minutes to pick the lock on the side door of the hangar, but when he’d done it he didn’t open the door. Instead he stopped and stepped back.
‘What’s the matter?’ Hunter asked.
Reilly shook his head. ‘Too easy,’ he said. ‘Planes are expensive, right, so why hasn’t this Charles guy got more than one lock? He’s gotta have some kind of a security system as well. Somethin’ we haven’t noticed.’
Reilly took the flashlight from Hunter and played the beam over the walls and eaves of the hangar.
‘No motion sensors or anythin’ like that,’ he muttered, ‘which is just as well ’cause by now we’d have triggered ’em all.’
He turned his attention to the door frame, and then focused the flashlight beam on the top left hand side of the door.
‘There,’ he said. ‘See that grey wire?’
Hunter looked closely. The thin wire was almost invisible against the faded and weathered grey paint.
‘Five gets you ten it’s connected to a magnetic catch somewhere on the inside of the door. Open the door, the catch breaks contact, and ten minutes later the place’s surrounded by bad news and black-and-whites.’
He rapidly traced the route taken by the thin grey wire. It ran vertically upwards to a height of about ten feet, then horizontally towards the left-hand corner of the building. Just around the corner it descended vertically and vanished out of sight behind a couple of warped planks leaning against the wall of the hangar.
Reilly handed the flashlight to Hunter and moved the planks to one side. Bolted to the wall at waist level was a small square black box. The grey wire looped around it and then entered its base. The front of the box contained a slot for a key, a green light, not illuminated, and a small red light which glowed faintly.
‘Can you turn it off?’ Hunter asked.
Reilly was looking closely at the key-hole. ‘Don’t think I can,’ he said. ‘Takes a custom-made key, and I reckon it’d take a coupla hours just to get a rough shape.’
‘So?’
‘So we bypass it, I guess.’
‘Will that work?’
Reilly stood up and replaced the planks.
‘Depends on just how worried your old buddy Mr. Charles is about security. What he’s got here is a nice low-key protection system that’d keep most people out. The lock on the door’s good quality, and it’d keep out the kids and the drunks. A thief who could pick it would probably just kick the door open and walk in, triggering the alarm. What I’m hopin’ is that the guy who fitted it never expected a professional to tackle it, and didn’t use screened cable.’
Hunter looked appraisingly at Reilly. ‘I’ve got a question,’ he said. ‘Just where the hell did you ever learn so much about locks and security systems? It’s not exactly normal training for a county sheriff, is it?’
‘Thought you’d never ask, Mr. Hunter,’ Reilly replied, with a grin, as he led the way back to the side door of the hangar.
‘I was Special Forces in ’nam. I specialized in safe-cracking and midnight shopping – that’s burglary to you. A guy learns a lot in Special Forces.’
‘Obviously,’ Hunter said. ‘So what’s with this screened cable stuff?’
‘The best way to do a system like this is to use screened cable to connect the magnetic catches with the control box. That way, if somebody tries to cut into the cable to short out the catch, the control box detects the break and triggers the alarm anyway.’
Reilly paused, dragged an empty oil drum to the hangar wall and clambered up onto it. He reached up, tugged a short section of the grey cable away from its fastenings, and rolled it carefully between his forefinger and thumb. Hunter aimed the flashlight at the cable, keeping the beam out of Reilly’s eyes.
‘Don’t feel screened to me,’ Reilly said. ‘I can make out five, maybe six, internal wires.’
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a switchblade knife, which he snapped open. With a single fluid movement, he ran the tip of the blade along the wire for about six inches, then closed the knife, peeled back the cable’s outer insulation and looked at the inner wires.
‘We’re OK,’ he said. ‘It’s a non-screened three-pair phone cable. I just gotta sort out which wire’s doin’ what. Can you get my bag?’
Hunter walked across to the Lincoln, which they’d parked out of sight beyond the hangar, and pulled Reilly’s voluminous black leather bag out of the trunk. They’d already discarded the gun case, so the contents of the bag resembled a small arsenal. Following Reilly’s
instructions, he felt around inside it until he found a small brown leather case with the embossed name ‘Micronta.’
‘It’s a digital multimeter,’ Reilly explained, ‘with a few special functions. I can use it to check which wire’s carrying what current, without havin’ to strip the insulation off any of ’em.’
Hunter held the flashlight as steady as possible while Reilly ran his tests. Ten minutes later he was done. Reilly identified the red and the green wires as those connected to the door’s magnetic catch, carefully measured the current they were carrying, and adjusted the multimeter to act as a conduit. Then he inserted the sharpened ends of the multimeter’s probes into the wires until they made contact with the conductors, tucked the multimeter under the cable so that it wouldn’t fall, and climbed down off the oil drum.
‘Is that it?’ Hunter asked.
‘I sure hope so. To find out, we open the door.’
FBI Headquarters, J. Edgar Hoover Building, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.
‘It’s pretty much in place, sir,’ Timothy Myers said, as the Acting Director walked into his office and sat down.
McGrath nodded. ‘Good. Any problems?’
‘Not really,’ Myers said. ‘A bit of grumbling from some of the local cops who weren’t in the loop earlier, but when I explained about the Director I got all the help I needed.’
Myers paused. Despite his relief at having been side-lined by William McGrath, he was still curious.
‘You know more about this than I do,’ he continued. ‘Apart from being wanted for the Director’s murder, what makes these two guys so special? Christ, one’s just some British cop working over here with the Bureau and the other’s a sheriff from Hicksville, Nowhere County. Why the kill order? What have they done?’
‘It’s not what they’ve done,’ McGrath said. ‘Until the Director was kidnapped, neither of them had committed any kind of crime that I’m aware of.’
‘But the kill order,’ Myers interrupted. ‘That was in place long before that happened.’
‘I know,’ McGrath replied. ‘As I said, it’s not what they’ve done. It’s not even what they know. The reason for the kill order was because of what they might have found out.’
Myers digested this in silence for a moment or two. ‘That seems like a pretty extreme response,’ he said, finally, ‘if the reason for this whole operation is just to stop them possibly finding something out. What the hell could be that important? And just who the hell is that irritating asshole in Nevada?’
McGrath shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you,’ he said. ‘And even if I could, I wouldn’t. When the shit first hit the fan over that weird murder in Montana, Director Donahue told me that I wouldn’t want to know. Now I’ve read the Omega file,’ he went on, ‘and I know exactly what he meant.’
McGrath shuddered slightly, as hideous images formed in his memory. If Myers noticed, he gave no sign.
‘And the guy in Nevada?’ Myers prompted. The one, he could have added, who’s now pulling your strings, Mr. Assistant Director McGrath.
‘He’s the lynchpin of the whole operation,’ McGrath said. ‘He’s the only one who knows exactly what’s going on, and whatever he wants, he gets. You can consider that, Myers, to be Bureau policy until further notice.’
McGrath stood up. ‘I’m not using the Director’s office,’ he said, motioning to the closed door. ‘I’m going to stay in my old office until this situation gets resolved. Don’t call me on the phone unless you need me urgently, but bring me a progress report on the search at least once every two hours.’ McGrath glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll be out of the building for about ninety minutes,’ he said. ‘If you need me, you’ll have to leave a message on my pager.’
‘You’re not taking your mobile?’ Myers asked, surprised.
McGrath nodded. ‘I will be, but it’ll be switched off most of the time. I have to go and brief the President. That’s another job I can do without right now.’
Montgomery County, Virginia
Hunter ran the beam of the flashlight around the inside of the hangar, then reached for the light switch.
‘You sure that’s a good idea?’ Reilly asked.
‘I didn’t see any sign of other properties anywhere near here,’ Hunter said, ‘and in any case, thieves work in the dark, with flashlights. If anyone round here does see the hangar lights on, the chances are they’ll just assume it’s some mechanic who’s working late.’
The two men looked around the interior. As hangars went, it wasn’t very big, about thirty yards by fifty yards in size, but more than adequate for the three aircraft parked inside. Hunter recognized an Aztec and a Cherokee, both in red and white livery, and a smaller, dark-coloured plane at the rear that he couldn’t immediately identify.
‘You can fly these things?’ Reilly demanded.
‘Yeah,’ Hunter said, and walked past the sheriff to look at the third aircraft.
He’d been expecting to find two or three small single-engine planes, and to take one of them, but the sight of the third aircraft stopped him and set him thinking.
It wasn’t pretty. A short, wide fuselage with stubby wings and a rugged undercarriage. On top, a bulbous canopy offered the pilot an excellent all-round view.
‘Hey,’ Reilly said, walking up beside Hunter. ‘We get those round Beaver Creek.’
Hunter nodded. ‘You would have,’ he said. ‘It’s a crop-duster.’
‘Right. Noisy little bastards. Always flying real low and setting down just about anywhere they please.’
Hunter looked at him. ‘You said it. It’s just what we need.’
‘That thing? I thought we was takin’ one of the other two.’
Hunter shook his head. ‘No. Think about it. We’re going to have to stay low, really low, because every radar unit in the country is going to have instructions to track and identify every airborne contact. If we take the Aztec and fly that across Virginia at fifty feet, we’ll be below radar cover, but every driver or pedestrian on the ground is going to wonder why the hell we’re dragging the weeds. And one or two of those concerned citizens will start ringing their local airfield or their local sheriff or their local FBI office. And once that happens, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to guess that we’ll suddenly find an Apache or Cobra helicopter gun-ship sitting waiting for us at a bend in the road.’
Hunter paused for breath.
‘But with a duster, it’s different. They’re effectively invisible. People see them all the time, flying at treetop height, or landing in fields to top-up the chemical tanks, but they never notice them. They’re a part of America’s farmlands just the same as a tractor or a harvester. They’re also tough, and we’ll be landing to refuel in pretty much any field that looks empty and long enough, even if it’s newly ploughed – do that a few times in a Cessna and you’ll break the undercarriage. That’s why we’ll take the duster.’
‘OK,’ Reilly said. ‘I’ll buy that.’
Oval Office, White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.
‘So what went wrong?’ Charles Gainey asked, his voice surprisingly quiet and controlled, given what William McGrath had just told him.
‘We’re not sure, Mr. President,’ William McGrath replied. ‘Quite obviously Hunter and Reilly have discovered something about Roland Oliver –’
‘Something!’ the Secretary of Defense snapped. ‘Something! That’s some kind of a fucking understatement, isn’t it? They knew enough to identify the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as one of the handful of people in America who was fully indoctrinated into Roland Oliver. They walked into FBI Headquarters, snatched him in broad daylight, and then they killed him!’
‘James,’ the President said soothingly. ‘This isn’t helping. What’s done is done. What we have to do now is decide how best to retrieve the situation.’
Dickson lapsed into silence, and sat glowering in the large armchair.
‘Mr. McGrath?’ Charles Gainey prompte
d.
‘Actually, we’re not sure how much they do know, but we don’t think they know as much as it might appear.’ McGrath glanced over at James Dickson before continuing. ‘What we do know is that Sheriff Reilly managed to kill the two members of the clean-up team who were sent to eliminate him. How, we don’t know, and it really doesn’t matter now. With them dead, we have to assume that Reilly took possession of their identity cards which are, of course, completely genuine documents. Hunter has worked with the Bureau long enough to recognize a genuine FBI identity card, and it isn’t too great a leap of logic to assume that they decided to question the people issuing the orders, rather than the people carrying out the operation.
‘We surmise that the two men decided to interrogate the Director of the FBI simply because Hunter is reasonably familiar with Bureau Headquarters. He underwent training at Quantico, which of course included several familiarization visits to Pennsylvania Avenue, and he may well have been there since then in connection with ongoing investigations. It would probably have been more difficult for him to have gained access to CIA Headquarters at Langley, simply because as far as we know he’s never been there, but he could conceivably have targeted the Director of Central Intelligence instead of the head of the FBI. Or you, Mr. Secretary,’ he added, turning to James Dickson.
Dickson stirred uncomfortably in his chair.
‘In summary, Mr. President,’ McGrath concluded, ‘we don’t think they actually know a great deal about Roland Oliver. Of course, we don’t know what Director Donahue told them, but I believe that if he had explained the full scope of Roland Oliver, either Reilly or Hunter would have killed him out of hand.’
Charles Gainey shuddered slightly.
‘I just hope to Christ they don’t work out what’s really going on,’ he muttered.
‘So,’ McGrath continued, ‘our best estimation is that Reilly and Hunter probably know that Roland Oliver operates out of Nevada, but don’t know exactly what the project does. Our guess is that they’ll try to get out to Nevada as soon as possible. Obviously there’s no way they can actually get into Roland Oliver, purely because of its location, but we still want them apprehended and taken care of as soon as possible.’
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