Our joking took the edge off; but it was clear there was something not right here.
I turned left off the main stretch, and eventually found somewhere to park on the road seven blocks south of where Lofkin had stopped, which was equally full of cars. Then, with Vann taking the sea-bag, we returned to the main drag, and headed northwards, walking through the gathering darkness of an overcast night. The barely visible words on the shop-fronts – The Mineral Community Bank, The Municipal Building, Robin’s Nest Nursery – confirmed the impression of a generic backwater town. Eventually we came to the turning down which Lofkin had gone. But instead of heading that way, we continued straight on, coming to the town-square on our left, and a gas station on our right. The town square was little more than a glorified parking lot (also full of cars), bordered on one side by the road, two by shops, and the last by a motel whose sign read: No Vacancy. The whole thing looked fast asleep. The petrol station, however, had lights on and a guy manning the till.
I looked at my watch. 12:33.
‘These cars,’ I said to Vann, ‘they’ve got something to do with The Order.’
‘Either that, or the Hell’s Angels’ little-known automobile division happens to be passing through.’
I smiled. ‘I’m going to talk to the guy in the petrol station. See what he knows.’
Vann nodded, and I made for the entrance. An electronic ding-dong sounded as I crossed the threshold. The guy at the counter was young – perhaps still in high-school – with a wide, obvious face, and long, greasy hair. He had the look of someone bright, stubborn, a bit of an outsider.
‘Got any Marlboros?’ I said.
‘Should’ve known,’ he said. ‘Why else come in at this hour?’
He retrieved the smokes and placed them on the counter.
‘You tell me,’ I said, handing over a ten. ‘Why stay open through the night if nobody comes in for anything else?’
The kid fished out my change. ‘Ask my boss. Just because the town has a few visitors, he thinks he’ll make a killing by staying open all night. Doesn’t seem to realize that visitors sleep much the same hours as anyone else. After all, not much to stay awake for in Mineral.’
‘You tell your boss this?’ I said.
He shook his head.
‘I’m happy to look after the place and take his money. Not hard work.’
‘Some boss,’ I said.
‘It’s no wonder he’s hit the big time,’ he said facetiously.
I grinned. ‘So what’s with all these out-of-towners, anyway?’
‘So you’re not here for the event?’ he asked.
‘Not last time I checked.’
‘I should’ve known,’ he said with a grin. ‘Not too many amateur Civil War re-enactors walk around in suits.’
It was clear he disliked the event, and liked that I wasn’t associated with it.
‘Are Civil War re-enactments a common fixture in Mineral?’ I asked.
Again, he shook his head. ‘Obviously there are plenty in this part of the world, but it’s a first for Mineral. An events company contacted the Mayor five months ago, and suggested they put on Mineral’s very own re-enactment. The Mayor’s always wanted to bring us into the circuit, so jumped at the opportunity.’
I nodded. ‘And this is set for tomorrow?’
‘Can’t slip one by you,’ he said, with wink. ‘About 500 participants – due to commence at 6:30 a.m. over at Elizabeth Trice Walton Park. Since the motel’s full, the Mayor’s even allowed folk to camp in the park.’
‘Cold night for camping,’ I said.
He shrugged.
‘So what’s this company organizing the event?’ I asked.
He crumpled his brow. ‘They’re called True Shape. Hadn’t heard of them before. Think they’re a start-up.’
‘Get a chance to meet any of them?’ I said in a tone of idle curiosity.
‘Sure. They’ve been in town the past four days or so. Maybe ten of them, young and enthusiastic, though plenty more interested in making money than the history. They’re renting the Peterson house at the bottom of West 2nd.’
‘Nice place?’
‘Forget about it,’ he said. ‘Nicest place in town. Four stories. Tennis court and swimming pool in back. The works.’
‘You seem keener on the house than the event. Re-enactments not your thing?’
‘Well, I don’t care too much for this particular re-enactment, not least because I had to walk a mile to get into town due to there being nowhere to park my car. But I do like re-enactments when they’re done properly. Tomorrow’s event, you see, is a Public Demonstration, meaning it’s open to any member of the public willing to buy a ticket. One for the FARBs, basically. Not faithful to history.’
‘FARBs?’ I asked.
‘Fast and Researchless Buying. The sort of half-assed re-enactor who leaves almost everything – the muskets, uniforms, equipment – to the organizers. These FARBs do ridiculous things, like bringing cameras onto battle-fields. Whereas I’m what they call a Progressive. I take it seriously. If I’m doing a public re-enactment, I’ll only do Scripted Battles where everyone’s prepped on what to do. But my favorites are Total Immersion Events. It’s like group method acting. The real deal.’
Just as I’d thought, this kid was a bit of an outsider. But I liked him, and understood the appeal of playing parts.
‘You Progressives, always a handful,’ I said.
He grinned. I pocketed the smokes and made for the exit.
*
I found Vann where I’d left him, staring at the sky. Thick clouds were continuing to gather, submerging the town even deeper in shadow, and conjuring a bitter chill.
‘Here’s the deal,’ I said. ‘An events company called True Shape are putting on a Civil War re-enactment at 6:30 a.m. in the town park. There’s due to be about 500 participants – hence the cars. Meanwhile, approximately ten True Shape employees are renting the four story mansion where Lofkin has parked.’
I paused, then added:
‘My bet is that True Shape is another front for The Order. And given what we’ve just seen in Durham, I think it’s obvious what’s on the cards: The Order intends to switch the blank ammunition in the rifles they distribute with the real thing. Their plan is to have the participants wreak carnage on themselves on a spectacular scale…
‘Now, I reckon Lofkin is here taking a rest stop. After all, a safe house is the perfect location for Lofkin to let down his guard and get some sleep, since alternative arrangements can be made to look after the hostage. But I don’t think Lofkin will be directly involved in pulling off the atrocity. It seems to me more likely that True Shape – like the team behind the Aimes murder – are a self-contained unit. So I reckon at some point, Lofkin will leave with Samuel. But when that will be, I don’t know. Perhaps Lofkin plans to stick around for the action, and again force Samuel to watch. But more likely, Lofkin will want to depart sooner because he’ll know this attack won’t be mistaken for an accident, and he’ll want to avoid the huge response that’ll inevitably follow…’
I trailed off. Vann gave a low whistle.
‘So you’re sure these cultists are providing the participants with weaponry?’ he asked.
‘That’s what I’ve been told. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re preparing the weapons within the house as we speak.’
There was a silence as what I’d said sank in.
‘So what are you suggesting we do?’ probed Vann. ‘Storm the whole damn house – two men versus eleven?’
I nodded solemnly. ‘Most likely, Samuel will be locked in a room, perhaps with someone watching him, perhaps not. But either way, it’s a preferable situation to when Lofkin had his finger on the detonator at all times. And remember, we have the element of surprise. We’ll sneak in, and eliminate the lot of them. I can think of no other way to both retrieve Samuel, and eliminate the terrorist plot.’
Vann gave another low whistle, then looked me in the eye.
‘Is there no way you’d consider calling Quantico and getting in the HRT?’ he said. ‘I understand you wanting to have things in your own hands. But a team of twenty with all the technology… they’ll stand a far better chance.’
I shook my head. It wasn’t just about being in control.
‘It’ll take the HRT four hours to get here – three at the least. Yet we’ve no guarantees how long the cultist are planning on keeping Samuel here. He could be whisked away well before the boys arrive. And then Drexler kills Samuel anyway, because I’ve told the Bureau.’
Vann sighed. ‘Is there no way this atrocity can be prevented if we wind up captured? Can’t we get Giles to call the local police at 6 a.m. and tip them off if he doesn’t hear back from us after we’ve entered the house?’
Again, I shook my head. ‘We wind up captured in Mineral, Drexler will know we were wise to his plans, and will know we were the ones who organized the tip-off. That’s reason enough for Samuel’s head to roll.’
Vannevar fell silent with a pained expression. The cause of his distress was plain: if we failed to eliminate these cultists, countless innocents would die and this bothered me, too. But this was the situation Drexler had put me in. He was making me choose between my son, and the security of hundreds of others. And I’d made my decision: I was going to get my son back at any cost.
And besides, if anyone was going to be able to pull this off, it was me and Vann.
I sighed. ‘It’s in our hands, Vann. If we wipe out these bastards, it’s crisis averted. Then we can let the Bureau go after Drexler, all guns blazing.’
He nodded slowly. He was coming to terms with the fact that having my back meant sharing in my decision…
Suddenly, there was new resolve in his face. ‘Eleven versus two? Piece of cake. They’ll be dead before they know what hit them.’
‘Thataboy,’ I said.
A smiled flickered at the corners of his mouth.
‘We should enter only with the gear we absolutely need,’ he said. ‘That way, if things go pear-shaped, but we manage to get out, we’ll still have vital items such as Bureau IDs, phones, cash. Though we shouldn’t leave them in the car, they’ll find that. Somewhere else.’
This was good thinking. I looked around, and spotted the white steeple of the town church two minutes to our north.
‘How’s that for a sanctuary,’ I said, nodding towards the steeple.
‘As good as any,’ he replied.
I led the way to the church, and found a place to stash the bag between a hedge and the building. We then extracted from the bag everything we reckoned we’d need on top of the pistols we were already carrying – which amounted to the pair of blades and the Invisio earpieces – while leaving behind the sniper-rifle, the remaining GPRS bugs and receiver, our mobiles, FBI IDs, and cash and credit cards.
On the way back to town, a slash of lightning cleaved the sky, momentarily turning night into day. Then came an almighty bellow of thunder. I looked over my shoulder. Through the dark, I could just make out the words on the marquee outside the church:
‘What if you had only a week to live?’
Chapter 19
Thursday, February 28, 2013, 1:30 a.m. – Mineral, Virginia.
The rain began as we started down West 2nd Street, and quickly escalated to a torrential downpour. Vann and I trudged along what was little better than a dirt track, guided by the dim lights from a small number of properties, until we finally came to the large house at the end. It appeared in the shadows like an undifferentiated mass of grey, punctuated by the occasional light at the window. But despite the gloom, we could clearly see that there were five vehicles in the drive – including Lofkin’s Ford – and that there was nobody on guard. Crucially, it looked like we still had the advantage of surprise. And to make it count, we knew the answer was back-to-basics guerrilla warfare.
Suddenly, a second shock of lightning set the scene brilliantly alight. For a moment, the place looked like a house from hell.
I turned to Vann, and said over the sound of rain pummeling the ground:
‘Samuel will most likely be in a locked room on the fourth floor at the top of the house. Perhaps with someone standing guard, perhaps not.’
Vann nodded. We’d both seen enough hostage situations to know captives are usually held higher up the building. It complicates their route of escape.
‘Our only option is to slaughter every last one of them,’ I continued. ‘Silently working through the house until Samuel is secured. The gas station guy said there were maybe ten of them. So eleven in all, including Lofkin. But we mustn’t take that for granted. There may be more. And blowing our cover with just one remaining could prove fatal.’
I condemned the cultists to death with a clear conscience. Once upon a time I might’ve considered them as misguided youths, deserving of mercy – as victims of brainwashing. But dealing with Jihadists had changed my way of thinking. Because they’d taught me that once someone is infected with the mind-virus of religious extremism, they are not only happy to carry out unspeakable acts of violence, but they’re also impossible to dissuade from their line of thinking. When an opponent is obsessively trying to do you mortal harm, there can be no room for mercy.
Vann nodded. He was on the same page. He then said:
‘But they’re going to be reluctant to detonate Samuel’s vest. Because even if they’re willing to be in the same house as a bomb going off, they still have a job to do this morning and the blast would blow their cover. So if they want to stop us by directly threatening Samuel’s life, they’ll probably have to put a gun to his head. And if Samuel is in fact unattended, then we might have a chance of getting to him before they can do so…’
I rocked my head side to side. This was all speculation. Yet, at this point, we had no choice but to speculate. I looked again at the house, and wished for a glimpse of how things stood within, an idea of what to anticipate. But as things were, there was so much we didn’t know. And in the field, the less you know, the worse your chances.
‘Point of entry?’ asked Vann.
The front door was out of the question. But there was an opening in the fence to the left of the house, leading down the side of the property, presumably to the garden.
‘With a house like this, there’s bound to be an entrance round back,’ I said. ‘More than one.’
‘No time like the present,’ replied Vann decisively.
We went for the opening, and followed the pathway. Soon we came to a door on the side of the house. I could see from the crack between the door and jamb that it was unlocked.
‘I’ll enter here,’ I whispered to Vann. ‘You head round back and find a second entrance. We’ll enter simultaneously. Work our way to the front of the house.’
He gave me thumbs-up, inserted his Invisio M4, then skirted round the building. I thumbed my own Invisio into my ear, extracted my Ruger from my pocket, and waited. Presently, Vann said to me through the earpiece:
‘There’s a conservatory round back – lights out, doors unlocked. From what I can see, it leads to a kitchen. Ready when you are.’
I pressed my ear to the door, but could hear nothing over the rain.
‘On the count of three,’ I whispered. ‘One, two, three.’
With my pistol upraised, I burst silently through the door. The room was still, with a TV in the corner, and the door to the next room ajar. Only after a moment did I realize there was a man sleeping on the sofa, under a comforter. And when I pulled it back to find him dressed in the grey uniform of The Order, I promptly put a bullet in his head. A quick pat down told me he was unarmed. Playing it safe, I recovered my shell case, and shifted the body behind the sofa and out of sight, before pausing to listen for noise beyond the room. But all I could hear was the roar of rainfall. I’d made my first mistake: I’d forgotten to close the door on entering and the noise coming in was inviting attention. And sure enough, no sooner had I closed the door than I heard footsteps approaching. A male voic
e said:
‘Gimmel, are you going for a cigarette, too?’
I dived for the sofa, and drew the comforter over me. I didn’t expect this to fool anyone too long – it was clear there’d been an intrusion from the water I’d trailed inside. But all I wanted was to induce a moment’s confusion. And then, when I heard this guy enter and stop mid-sentence, and I knew that moment had come, I threw off the comforter and aimed a bullet into his forehead. He crumpled to the carpet with a low thud.
Again, I pocketed the shell case and quickly searched the body. This time, I found a Beretta 92F tucked into his waistband. It was a serious weapon and if this guy was carrying, I had to assume the rest would be, too. It was the noise that worried me most: if someone fired a unsilenced Beretta, the whole house would know about it.
I slipped the Beretta into my pocket, then cautiously poked my head around the door. The next room was a large living space, with a door on the far side opening onto a corridor. I made for it at once, whispering as I went:
‘Two down. Heading towards a central corridor.’
‘Ditto,’ replied Vannevar.
I hit the corridor. To the right, it led round a corner to a central foyer, just out of sight. To the left, it led to the kitchen. Approaching from that direction was Vannevar. He was holding his blade which was red with blood. When we were engaged in combat at the same time, it was difficult to determine what he was up to, since the sound of his heavy-breathing through the earpiece was drowned out by my own. But he certainly looked like he’d been busy. He arrived at my side and I motioned to him that I was going to investigate the foyer. Then I glanced round the corner. There were two men: one sitting on a sofa, perhaps fourteen yards away; and another standing in front of him, with his back to me. I couldn’t make out what they were saying over the drone of the rain.
But this setup presented a problem, because both men were right near the foot of the stairs. So while I could deck one with the Ruger, by the time I was ready to take my second shot, the second man would already be mounting the stairs and raising the alarm. And not only did the angle make it difficult for Vann to take a shot at the same time, but it would be foolish to attempt it in the first place – since his Glock’s muzzle velocity surpassed the speed of sound. His bullet would create a sonic boom, regardless of his silencer. The solution was simple: I’d have to eliminate one with my Ruger, while Vann neutralized the second by hand.
False Prophet Page 11