Armageddon Conspiracy

by John Thompson

“So we’re just going to leave him there?”

  “He won’t run if he doesn’t think he’s a suspect,” she said, even as something in her rearview mirror caught her eye. She was once again seeing the set of headlights she’d been seeing intermittently for the past twenty miles. They’d gone under some bright arc lights a while back, and she’d seen they belonged to a pickup truck. The truck had a burned out parking light down on the bumper.

  “Can you at least tap the guy’s phone?”

  In her rearview mirror Maggie could see a delivery van now sitting directly behind her, screening the pickup. “We’ll probably need more evidence than we’ve got, especially when it concerns somebody like Biddle.”

  Brent slapped his door in frustration.

  She ignored him, staring now at the rearview mirror. “Somebody’s been following us, probably ever since Lambertville. I should have paid better attention.”

  Brent turned his head and looked through the back window. “Police?”

  Maggie put on her turn signal. “Police would have stopped us already. It’s a pickup truck.”

  “So where are we going?”

  “The back way,” Maggie said.

  “If he doesn’t follow us, maybe we can park and make out,” Brent said.

  “Funny.” Maggie glanced back and chewed her lip. “Hopefully I’m just paranoid, but I don’t think so.” She thought about the narrow road through the nature preserve that led eventually to Morristown. She knew it well enough to drive it at high speed and was pretty sure she could lose somebody who didn’t know where they were going.

  “If those are the guys who killed Smythe, a deserted road is about perfect for them,” Brent said. “This is a bad idea!”

  They were off the highway, approaching the turn for the nature preserve. “You’d rather lead them to my house?”

  Brent’s face was creased with worry. He glanced over his shoulder at the lights of the pickup about a hundred yards back, then gritted his teeth. “Do it,” he grunted.

  She swung left, and immediately the road narrowed and became uneven. The houses and lights disappeared, replaced quickly by empty darkness stretching on all sides.

  The driver of the pickup seemed to sense that they would try and lose him because he roared up on their bumper. Maggie floored the Toyota, but its soft suspension slammed through the bumps. “Shit!” she said as the far more powerful truck stayed on their tail. There were no other headlights in either direction, and after a half mile or so a blue police light began to flash.

  She glanced at Brent, who already had one hand on the door handle. She grabbed his arm. “Stay put and keep your head turned forward,” she ordered. She struggled to think as she slowed and pulled to the side, careful to leave two of her wheels on dry pavement for traction. She shifted into neutral and snatched her holster from the space between the seat and console.

  She was sure these weren’t cops, but what if they were? A voice in her head screamed that she couldn’t risk shooting a fellow officer, but it all smelled wrong. No cop would make a stop like this without backup, so if they stayed in the truck and waited, they were real, she decided. If they got out, they were something else.

  She unsnapped the holster, pulled out her Glock, and chambered a round. She reset the safety and slipped the gun beneath her thigh, knowing if things got tight she’d have only a split second to decide.

  She heard a door open. Her rearview mirror showed two men climbing from the truck. They edged cautiously toward the Toyota, taking small steps, staying to either side. She lowered her window and strained her ears for the sound of a police radio. Cops would have handhelds or the volume turned up in the truck so they could hear, but the only sound was the peeping of frogs in the nearby marsh. The man on the left stepped in front of the truck headlight, the silhouette of a pistol outlined beside his leg.

  These guys had waited to make their stop until they were someplace where there’d be no witnesses. They weren’t cops!

  She leaned out and called back to the man on the left side, “Hold it right there! Who are you and what do you want?” She said it with enough force that the man stopped.

  “Police. The two of you step out of the car,” he barked. “Hands where I can see them.”

  “Where’s the guy on your side?” she whispered to Brent.

  He was slouched in his seat, staring intently at his side mirror. “Couple feet behind the car.”

  “I’m not stopping here,” Maggie shouted. “I have the right to drive to a well-lighted place. You can follow me.” She felt Brent coil beside her, again ready to bolt. She gripped his thigh. “Don’t move,” she whispered.

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, ma’am.” The man’s shoes crunched gravel as he took another step. “Turn your engine off. You and your friend just get out of the car with your hands in plain sight.”

  She took her hand from Brent’s thigh and gripped her pistol. She was out of time, but could she shoot? What if these were stupid cops who were breaking all the rules?

  Suddenly Brent let out a gasp as he stared at the side mirror. “I see his face! It’s one of the FBI guys!” he said in a choked whisper. In the next second his door was open, and he exploded from the car.

  Maggie heard a gunshot, but she had no time to think. She jammed the shifter into reverse, stomped on the accelerator and cut the wheel. The rear bumper slammed the guy on her side with a loud thump. She immediately hit the brakes, her automatic already out the window. “Freeze,” she shouted at the man who was on his knees, groping for his gun. “Freeze!” she shouted again. The man glanced up and saw her Glock aimed at his chest, and he raised his hands.

  “Brent?” she screamed as she opened her door, rolled out, and squatted beside the car.

  “I’m okay,” he shouted.

  “Are you hit?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have his gun?”

  “No, but I’ve got him,” Brent answered. He appeared around the rear of Maggie’s car struggling with a large man. He held him in a throat lock and had one of the man’s arms twisted up behind his back.

  Maggie straightened, went forward, and kicked the first man’s pistol away. “On your stomach,” she commanded. “Hands behind your back. The man obeyed, lying face down in the road. She placed the barrel of her gun against his spine, pulled a pair of handcuffs from the pouch on her belt, and locked them around his wrists.

  Brent’s prisoner suddenly began to struggle wildly. He was as tall as Brent and more thickly built. Brent’s face knotted in pain as he struggled to keep control. Maggie approached and then kicked the man hard in the crotch. His eyes bugged, and then the air left his lungs in a rush. He sagged abruptly, appearing to lose all resistance and almost taking Brent down.

  “Get him on his stomach,” Maggie said, as she reached into her car for a spare set of cuffs in the door pocket.

  She handed Brent the cuffs just as the man started to struggle again. He outweighed Brent by thirty or forty pounds, and it was clear from Brent’s expression that the fighting must have re-injured his wounded stomach. Nonetheless, Brent knelt on the man’s back and gripped one meaty wrist as he managed to fasten the first bracelet. He seemed to have things under control, but then the man moved suddenly, raising his shoulder and bringing one leg up as he jerked his other hand free.

  Maggie saw what was happening. “Watch out!” she cried.

  Brent grabbed for the man’s arm as it snaked down to his pants cuff and a second later reappeared with a small revolver. Brent was off the man’s back now, holding the man’s gun arm in a desperate grip. The man swung his other arm, lashing the loose cuff savagely into the back of Brent’s head. Brent lost his grip momentarily, but grabbed the wrist again and shoved the gun away just as the man pulled the trigger. The gun was waving toward Maggie, and she dove to one side as a second shot boomed out.

  She aimed her own gun, looking for a chance to return fire. The man continued whipping his handcuff into Brent’s back and
head until he once again jerked his gun hand free. He rolled away from Brent and onto his knees, bringing the gun to bear on Brent, his arms locked in a two-handed shooter’s pose.

  “Drop it!” Maggie commanded, her finger tightening on the trigger.

  The man’s gun stayed locked on Brent, but he looked at her, then past her at his companion. His eyes widened.

  “Drop it!” Maggie shouted. “Now!”

  The man looked back at Brent, his face now oddly contorted. “McTighe!” he shouted, but his partner didn’t answer. “Oh Jesus,” he whimpered.

  “Drop it,” Maggie repeated.

  He kept the gun on Brent, but he cut her another sideways glance. “I can’t,” he said.

  “You can’t win,” Maggie said. “Drop it, now!”

  “I am one of the chosen!” he said, his voice cracking.

  “Put down the gun,” she said, struggling to sound calm and steady.

  The man shook his head.

  Brent was on his knees, holding his stomach. “Who are you?” he grunted.

  “One of the chosen,” the man repeated.

  “Why did you steal the money? Why did you kill Dr. Faisal and Owen Smythe? Is Prescott Biddle your boss?”

  Sweat was streaming down the man’s face, and his hands shook. “I am one of the chosen,” he said for a third time, as he thumbed back the hammer.

  “No!” Maggie screamed as she saw the man’s finger tighten on the trigger. She fired twice, knocking him backward even as his gun went off. She looked at Brent, who was frozen in shock, staring at the twitching body.

  “Are you okay?” she asked in a trembling voice.

  Brent only nodded. All around them the world had fallen deathly silent. Maggie’s pulse thundered against her eardrums. After several more seconds, as frogs resumed peeping in the swamp, she turned to look at her other prisoner. He lay motionless. She went over, knelt beside him, and put her hand over her mouth upon seeing the jagged wound where his partner’s wild shot had blown the corner of his forehead away.

  Brent stood, hobbled over, and touched her shoulder. When she finally glanced up, she saw blood in his hair from where the handcuff had lacerated his scalp. Without a word he took the corpse by the ankles and dragged it into the deep grass beside the right front tire of the truck, out of sight of a passing car. He pulled the larger man behind the tire as well and then collapsed against the truck’s hood, his head bowed. “Who the hell were these guys?” he mumbled.

  Suddenly, headlights appeared in the distance, and a car approached out of the misty dark. Maggie was still frozen, but Brent recovered his senses enough to scuttle into the road for the pistol that lay a few feet from the slick of wet blood. He shoved it into his waistband, jerked his shirttail to cover it, and then pulled Maggie to her feet and back to a safe spot. They waited by the front fender of the truck as the car slowed.

  “Car trouble?” a man’s voice asked.

  “This lady just hit a deer,” Maggie heard Brent say. She waved to show that she was unhurt. “We thought it was dead,” Brent continued, “but then it jumped up and ran off.”

  “Happens all the time around here,” the man said. “As long as everybody’s okay, I wouldn’t worry. Those damn things have an amazing ability to live.”

  “Yeah, thanks for stopping.”

  “Okay, ‘night.”

  Brent waved as the car drove away, and then let out a moan. He turned toward Maggie, his eyes tight. “This has gone too far,” he said. “I’ve got to turn myself in.”

  “No!” she said, the heat of her emotion catching her by surprise. She was operating purely on instinct, but she felt no doubt whatsoever. “We’ve got to hide all of this and get out of here.”

  “No!” Brent said. “We’ve got two more guys dead! This can’t go on!”

  “If you quit, they win!” Maggie shouted. She forced herself into motion. She had several plastic evidence bags in her purse, a holdover from her detective days in Morristown, and she used one as she bent down and hurriedly removed the contents of the first man’s pockets. She repeated the process with the second man, sealed both bags, and then wrote “passenger” on the first one and “driver” on the second. She wasn’t sure the distinction mattered, but she was pleased that her brain still worked on some level.

  Brent watched her for a few seconds then pulled open the pickup’s door and searched the inside. A moment later he climbed out holding a manila file and the truck’s registration papers.

  Another car materialized out of the mist, coming faster than the last. Maggie stepped into the truck’s headlights to make herself visible, but as this car passed it did not slow. Maggie glimpsed a woman passenger’s face turned toward them for an instant, her expression a worried frown. Was it possible she would call the police and report two suspicious vehicles stopped in the wildlife sanctuary?

  “Hurry,” she called to Brent.

  He tossed the file in the Toyota then came around to where the bodies lay. Without another word, Maggie took the nearest one by the ankles while Brent grabbed it under the armpits. Together, they hoisted it into the truck bed where it fell with a sickening thud. The second body was much heavier, but they managed it as well.

  Brent lifted his shirt, pulled out the gun he’d picked up, and started to toss it into the bed.

  “Don’t,” Maggie said, her voice tight. Her mind was leaping ahead. She was operating on a cold certainty now, not only of Brent’s innocence but that all the usual rules had been put on hold. “You’ll probably need it.”

  He hesitated and looked at her as if she was some stranger he’d never met, but then he tucked the pistol back in waistband.

  “Find a place where the truck will be out of sight,” she said. “I’ll follow you.”

  Brent nodded and then climbed behind the wheel of the truck and started off. As Maggie followed in her Toyota, her mind raced. This wasn’t just a theft. It wasn’t even a theft/murder. It was a complex operation of some sort, and it pointed right back to Prescott Biddle. So, why would a billionaire steal a billion dollars?

  She thought she already knew the answer, but others would say it was a wild supposition, pregnant with political risk. She hadn’t even shared her thoughts with Brent because they seemed so improbable. She’d put them down in her memo and left it on Jenkins’ desk, but that was as far as she thought it would go. She estimated zero probability that anyone at Project Seahawk would want to follow it up.

  However, her gut instincts told her she was absolutely right and that she was looking at a full-blown national crisis—all of which brought her back to Brent. Two more dead bodies were even more reason for him to remain at large. If he turned himself in, the police and FBI would consider the problem solved, and it might be weeks before anyone could persuade them differently. By then it might be too late, which meant Brent had to remain on the loose until the two of them could build a credible argument. What were the odds, with the police and FBI coming from one direction and these would-be killers coming from the other?

  She’d been following Brent as he searched for a turnoff, and now she noticed a strange sound, something halfway between a moan and a voice. It took her several seconds to realize she was the one making it. She was a lapsed Catholic, hadn’t been to Mass in over a year, but she’d been saying, “Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus,” over and over through gritted teeth.

  FORTY-FOUR

  GAS STATION, SOMMERVILLE, NJ, JUNE 30

  BRENT SLUMPED LOW IN THE Toyota’s passenger seat, using a paper towel to dab at the gashes on the back of his head, while Maggie filled the tank with gas. His hair was matted with dried blood, and he had a pounding headache, but at least the bleeding had slowed. A moment earlier he’d unbuttoned his shirt and checked his abdomen. Amazingly, only one of the butterflies had popped. A thin trickle of blood oozed from the wound, nothing serious.

  He glanced up when Maggie slid behind the wheel, studying her face in the halogen glare of the service station’s lights. Dark shadows pool
ed in the hollows of her cheeks, and the olive tone of her skin had turned a sickly yellow. Her eyes that normally sparked with energy and intelligence were dull and lusterless. It made what he had to tell her even more difficult.

  The last several hours had been a descent into madness, but a moment earlier things had gotten infinitely worse when he’d opened up the dead men’s wallets only to find the Sheriff’s Deputy badges. The sight had sickened him.

  It must have shown in his expression, because Maggie cocked her head. “What?”

  Without a word, he took one of the wallets and heard her sharp intake of breath as he flashed the badge. She surprised him when her expression immediately grew hard. “It was self-defense. They were going to murder us.”

  “Yeah, but why? What the hell does, ‘I am the Chosen!’ mean? Chosen for what?”

  Brent shook his head as he thought again about the truck with the two bodies. They’d left it at the end of an overgrown dirt track, rammed deep in some high bushes, but the wildlife refuge was public. In a day or two someone would stumble over it, and there would almost certainly be microscopic evidence—blood or hair samples, something that would link him to the killings. Then he’d be a cop killer on top of everything else. Even worse, Maggie had been there. He balled his fists, wishing he’d been able to keep her out of this.

  As though reading his mind, Maggie put her hand on his forearm and squeezed. “I make my own choices.”

  He nodded and turned away. He knew she was strong and independent, that no one could force her to do anything she thought was wrong. It didn’t make any of this right, but he couldn’t worry about it now, not the lack of fairness, not his feelings for her, not the future. There’d be time for those things if they succeeded. His job right now had to be pushing past their problems and giving her strength while they planned their next step.

  He put the wallets aside and handed her the folder he’d found in the pickup. “This helps explain how those guys managed to find us,” he said, referring to the collection of intimate details about his life, down to Maggie’s home address, even quotes from his employment interview with Genesis Advisors’ consulting psychologist.