Cut Out

by Bob Mayer

  “What happened to my brother?”

  Lisa’s first question for Giannini didn’t surprise Riley. On the way to the campsite he’d told Giannini that Lisa didn’t know how her brother died. Giannini took Lisa gently by the arm and led her a short distance away to break the grim news.

  “So what now?” Hammer asked quietly.

  Riley watched Lisa react to the news, throwing herself into the comfort of Giannini’s arms. “I don’t know. We’ve run as far as we can, but we can’t stay here forever.”

  He told Hammer about the attack on Giannini in Chicago. He also told him about the helicopter—Hammer had heard it—adding in the fact of the weapon.

  “So they know we’re here,” Hammer summarized. He glanced at the two women. “They probably followed Giannini somehow. Maybe they bugged her car, just like they did to your car at Bragg.”

  “How they got here doesn’t matter,” Riley said. “What happens now is what’s critical. I could hear the helicopter hovering down near Newfound Gap for quite a while.”

  “They’ll find Giannini’s car, then,” Hammer replied.

  “What really bothers me,” Riley said, “is that we’ve got more people after our ass than I can count and I’m still not sure who they are.”

  “If they’re nearby, why don’t we find out?” Hammer suggested.

  Riley frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve got something—”

  Hammer was interrupted by the two women rejoining them. There were tears on Lisa’s face, and her look indicated she was many miles away, experiencing a new grief.

  Riley did the formalities of introducing Giannini to Hammer. She smiled crookedly at the older soldier. “So you’re stuck on this bus to nowhere too?”

  “One big happy family,” Hammer acknowledged.

  “Let’s talk this out,” Riley suggested. He sat down on his rucksack, and the others got as comfortable as they could on the ground. The sun was completely covered by clouds now, and the gray weather only deepened the gloom around the small circle. “All we have is the phone number to the Witness Protection Program, but we have to assume it’s been compromised. The Program is still showing a good status for Lisa and her husband, and we know that’s bullshit, so not only is the phone number compromised, but we also have to figure that someone has access to the Program’s computer system. That says to me it has to be someone on the inside.”

  “But is that someone working for the mob?” Giannini asked. “From what you told me, you had two groups of people outside your townhouse.”

  “Maybe both groups were working for the same people,” Lisa suggested. She felt numb, but was trying to focus on the conversation. “I’m sure that the Torrentinos offered a lot of money for my husband’s whereabouts.”

  “Half a million dollars,” Giannini said. “But my source in the mob told me there were no freelancers involved. I don’t know who hit me in the alley, but I assume they were working for Charlie D’Angelo, because they found me through my contact, Nickie. That means they ultimately were working for the Torrentinos.”

  “Not necessarily,” Riley said. “It might be that—”

  “If you’d let me finish what I was gonna say,” Hammer broke in, “I might have a way we can find out who’s after us without having to yap our jaws all day.” He reached into his fatigue pants pocket and pulled out a small plastic case with a four-inch metal antenna. “I took this out of the van at Camp Mackall. I say we turn it on.”

  “What?” Lisa exclaimed. “Are you crazy? I thought the whole point of coming up here was to hide out.”

  “We may not be hiding as well as we’d like,” Giannini said. “My car is parked down at the Newfound Gap lot, and it won’t take them long to find it if they’re flying around here in a helicopter.”

  Riley had been silent, considering the bug in Hammer’s hand. “I say we turn it on.”

  Lisa looked at him as if he’d grown another head. “Are you both going nuts?”

  Riley spoke calmly, in a low voice. “I hope they—whoever the hell they are—don’t know we’re up here. But we haven’t had much luck so far. Every place we’ve gone or been, they’ve shown up eventually. And usually when we didn’t expect them to. If they are here looking for us, then I say we invite them at a place and time of our choosing for once.”

  Giannini nodded. “Hell, yeah. I’m tired of running.”

  Riley reached into his cargo pocket, pulled out the topographic map of the area, and spread it on the pine needles. “I think we have some work to do.”

  CHICAGO

  1 NOVEMBER, 10:00 a.m.

  Charlie D’Angelo looked at the newspaper report of the two men murdered in the alley before throwing the paper into the wastebasket next to his desk. His chief subordinates were gathered around his desk, awaiting his reaction to the news.

  Charlie drummed his fingers and thought for a few seconds before speaking. “Gentlemen, the situation concerning the Torrentino brothers is most unfortunate and I sympathize with their desire to see justice done.” He pointed at the wastebasket. “But the price is getting out of control. We had a one hundred thousand dollar contract with these two gentlemen, half paid up front, and not only was the work not completed, but we have also lost our initial investment.” He twisted his Harvard ring. “In economics that is called ‘sunk cost’—an investment that cannot be recouped. The key is that you cannot throw good money after bad.” He could see a few frowns crinkle Neanderthal foreheads as they tried to follow what he was saying.

  “In other words, we pissed away fifty grand and got nothing in return. We’ve been offering a half million for the Cobbs—or shall I say our associates the Torrentinos have been offering a half million. But we must realize that that money is also our money.” D’Angelo shrugged. “If we get a line on these people and can do them, fine. But we can’t waste any more resources chasing them down.”

  “What about the two million Cobb skimmed?” one of them asked.

  “Also sunk cost,” D’Angelo said. He checked the faces surrounding him, looking for signs of protest, for still-strong tendrils of loyalty to the jailed former bosses. He saw none. “Good. Let us move on, then.”

  The men moved out—all except Roy Delpino, who sat down across the desk from D’Angelo and lit a cigar. “So what’s the real story?”

  D’Angelo leaned back in his chair. “The real story is that this is turning out to be a big pain in the ass and a waste of resources. Just like I said.”

  “The Torrentinos are going to be pissed,” Delpino observed.

  “Fuck the Torrentinos,” D’Angelo replied with a cold smile. “I control things now and I’m tired of taking orders from prison. The Torrentinos are history.”

  Delpino frowned. “You’re going to give up on the money?”

  “Philip Cobb is dead.”

  “What?”

  “Cobb’s dead. Fastone’s dead. The only one who might know the whereabouts of the money is Cobb’s wife.”

  “How do you know all this?” Delpino asked.

  “A little bird told me,” D’Angelo said. “And no, I’m not giving up on the money. I have an inside line on Cobb’s wife and we shall soon see what she knows.” He pointed at the door. “But we certainly don’t need all those assholes to know that, now do we?”

  GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS

  1 NOVEMBER, 11:30 a.m.

  “Newfound Gap Road has been closed to incoming traffic,” Simon reported to Master as he put down the portable phone. “The park rangers have the gates manned to allow traffic that is already on the road to depart.”

  Master was seated in his swivel chair, eyes focused on the pictorial map of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park taped above the communications console. Simon’s words buzzed in his head and were noted, then he went back to pondering the map. He had three of his men up in the helicopter, searching to the east and west of the Newfound Gap, taking particular note of the trails in the area. The problem was that the spruce
and fir trees covered much of the ground, making observation poor.

  Master’s left forefinger tapped on the console for several minutes, irritating the other occupants of the van, none of whom dared say a word. Finally he turned to Simon. “We need to consider pulling out.”

  Simon’s surprise was evident. “What?”

  Master lifted his forefinger slightly and indicated the map. “They could be anywhere. I assume they’re on foot, but even then, given a twelve-hour head start they can be anywhere in”—he closed his eyes in thought, then opened them—“about a fifteen-mile circle of where Giannini’s car is.” He grabbed a red pen and a ruler and roughly traced a circle of that scale around Newfound Gap. “This is some of the worst terrain for searching I’ve ever seen. We’re not going to find them from the air, not unless they are especially stupid—and given their actions so far, I don’t think we can count on that. Even on the ground, my men could walk by within twenty feet of them and miss them.

  “We need to consider pulling back and waiting them out. They have to come out sometime. Riley will go AWOL in a week. Giannini is already AWOL from the police department.”

  “What about—”

  Simon was interrupted by the analyst’s startled yell. “Sir!”

  Master turned. “What?”

  The analyst pointed at one of his computer screens. “One of our tracking devices has been activated.”

  “One of our search teams?”

  “No, sir.” The analyst tapped on the small keyboard in front of him. “Transponder code indicates it’s one of the ones that was on Surveillance Two’s van.”

  The van out at Camp Mackall, where the two men had been killed. Master’s eyes narrowed. “And it just got turned on?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Location?”

  The analyst placed an acetate overlay of the topographic map on the screen. “Right here.”

  Master noted the location, then marked it on his paper map with a red pen. It was a white area, indicating open terrain—a rarity in the park. Andrews Bald was written across it in small black letters.

  “What does it mean—the tracking device being turned on?” Simon asked, bewildered by the exchange.

  Master stared at the map. “It could be Mister Riley inviting us to a party.” He picked up the portable phone. “And I believe we will accept the invitation.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS

  1 NOVEMBER, 12:00 p.m.

  Something about these ATF people bothered Ferguson. He tried to put his finger on it as he banked the Jet Ranger around Mount Kephart and headed for The Sawteeth, a set of jagged peaks running along the spine of the mountains. He’d worked with law enforcement officials before on various missions over the park—mostly Drug Enforcement Administration agents searching out marijuana fields in the more remote areas of the park—and these guys were different.

  The first thing that struck him was that they paid in cash. Anyone who had any dealings with the government knew that you had to have forms filled out in triplicate to get any sort of reimbursement—and that was only after a long wait. Ferguson had about dropped his teeth when the man pulled out a wad of cash and forked over the money. He’d also noted the strange-looking automatic weapon the man had brought on board; it didn’t look like government issue. Another thing was that after dropping off the head agent in the Newfound Gap parking lot, these other three had climbed on board and they were armed to the teeth with very high powered gear.

  “Fly along that trail,” the man to Ferguson’s left ordered.

  As he complied, Ferguson wondered why ATF agents would need silenced weapons—for that’s most certainly what those odd-looking rifles were. Ferguson felt the roll of bills sitting comfortably in the breast pocket of his flight suit and relaxed. Whoever these guys were, they had paid and they had badges—that was good enough for him.

  Something caught Ferguson’s eye. “Your phone is flashing,” he said over the intercom to the man sitting in the copilot’s seat, who’d identified himself as Rivers.

  Ferguson couldn’t hear the conversation, but it electrified Rivers. He flipped closed the phone, opened his map, and began looking for something. He turned to Ferguson. “You know where Andrews Bald is?”

  “Yeah. Other side of Newfound Gap Road. It’s about the only clear place up here—other than the parking lots—where I can set down, so we have it marked on our maps as an emergency landing field.”

  “Drop us off there, then go back to Newfound Gap Road and pick up the rest of your money from”—he paused for a second—“Lieutenant Loggins.”

  Sounded good to Ferguson. He would be glad to get rid of these guys. He increased throttle and pulled up on the cyclic as he reversed course.

  12:10 p.m.

  Andrews Bald was one of only two balds in the Smokies. On all the other hilltops, natural growth had overwhelmed the open areas with forest. The Park Service had designated Andrews, along with Gregory Bald farther to the west, as experimental research subzones. Because of that, the hilltop was maintained as an open area with the present plant life. It was also one of the few places in the park where a person could get a view unrestricted by trees as far south as the Nantahala Mountains.

  The Forney Ridge Trail ran from the parking area below the Clingmans Dome tower for two miles to Andrews Bald. That was the route Hammer and Riley had taken to get to their present position on the northeast side of the Bald, overlooking the bushes and grasses that sloped down to the forest on the far side of the Bald, where the terrain dropped off precipitously into Flat Top Gap.

  “Hear it?” Hammer asked. “OH-58,” he added, giving the term for the military version of the Bell Jet Ranger. “In Vietnam I could always tell what kind of chopper was coming just by the sound.”

  “That’s what I saw flying around,” Riley said. He felt a surge of adrenaline kick through his system as the probability of his fears being confirmed grew higher.

  The aircraft came in high from the east, headed directly for the open area. The pilot pulled pitch as it descended, the skids touching down lightly about a hundred yards away from the tree line in which Hammer and Riley were concealed. Three armed men dressed in black hopped off, and the aircraft lifted and was gone.

  While two of the men pulled security lying on the ground, facing east and west, the third man put a metal briefcase on the ground and flipped open the cover. He knelt over it, took a bearing, and then closed it. He gave an order Riley couldn’t hear, and the men were on their feet.

  The three men moved professionally toward the north side of the open area, to the hard-packed earth of the Forney Ridge Trail—about thirty yards to the right of Riley’s position. The three moved in a triangle, lead man pointing due north, the others covering the flanks.

  “Same weapons,” Hammer noted quietly, spotting the FA-MAS silenced rifles held at the ready by each of the men.

  Riley didn’t reply. He slowly put down his own rifle and picked up the two plastic clackers that lay by his side.

  12:12 p.m.

  Master handed the money to the pilot and didn’t wait for the bird to take off. He sprinted back to his command van and jumped inside.

  “Let’s go!” he ordered. The driver threw the vehicle in gear and they roared off onto Newfound Gap Road, almost immediately squealing to a stop at the locked gate at the Clingmans Dome road. Master opened the passenger door and steadied his Glock 10mm against the open window frame. He fired one shot, the round ripping apart the gate lock.

  “Go,” he said, and the driver nosed open the gate, then accelerated down the road. The other two vans, holding the rest of Master’s team, followed.

  12:13 p.m.

  The three men were less than ten feet from the trail and forty feet from Riley when he squeezed the clacker in his right hand. The crack of the claymore mine was deafening, followed immediately by the sound of thousands of steel ball bearings whirring through the air. The three men immediately hit the grou
nd, one of them firing a wild burst.

  Riley had taped the mine to a tree, angling it upward at sixty degrees to ensure that no one would get hurt. It was a firepower message, which he now followed with a verbal one.

  “Leave your rifles on the ground and stand up with your hands behind your heads, fingers interlocked!” he yelled. “I’ve got another mine aimed right at your faces!”

  There was a brief pause, then a silent fusillade of bullets ripped through the air above Riley and Hammer. Hammer peered over the thick log he was hiding behind and shook his head. “I told you they wouldn’t surrender.”

  Riley didn’t repeat his request to the three men. He squeezed the clacker in his left hand. The claymore, which was secreted in the high grass less than ten feet from the three men’s position, exploded. The steel balls scythed through the grass and ripped into human flesh. The point man took the center brunt of the arc of death, his body tossed almost a yard by the simultaneous impact of hundreds of the pellets. The man on the left died as his face was peppered by the steel, both eyes punctured. The third man caught the blast on his left side. His arm was almost severed, but his body armor caught the majority of the explosion and he clung to life, rolling with the blast.

  Riley and Hammer stood, then moved out of the security of the trees toward the carnage. The sound of the mines going off still echoed in their ears, and the smell of explosives filled their nostrils. Covering across each other’s front, they came upon the bodies. The wounded man held up his blood-covered right hand in supplication as a froth of blood flowed over his lips. Hammer fired twice, the impact of the rounds throwing the man’s head back into the dirt and blowing brain matter all over the ground.

  “We needed him to talk!” Riley snapped.

  “He was dead meat, but he was ready to take one of us with him,” Hammer replied calmly, as he ensured the other two men were dead by the expeditious manner of putting a round through each of their heads. He looked up at Riley. “This was just the first wave. There’ll be more. You can talk to them if you like.”