Silver Cross

by B. Kent Anderson

  Gray shook her head. “I don’t leave things unfinished. Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know. Brazil, maybe. I like Brazil.”

  “Wait.”

  “What do you mean, wait?”

  “There may yet be a way.”

  “What are you talking about? A way to do what?”

  “Mark, he didn’t get to you. Zale never called you?”

  “Good God, Ann.” Barrientos kicked more gravel. A dust cloud rose around him. “I’m here. No, he didn’t call me. And I wouldn’t—”

  Gray held up one hand. “I need you to do one more thing for me, Mark. Then you can go to Brazil or wherever you want.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to go to Chicago.”

  Barrientos backed up against the grill of the van. Their eyes met. Nearly a minute passed. “Jesus, Ann. It won’t work. I’m only one guy, and the protests are tomorrow. No one else is with us, not anymore.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “You’re not making sense. What about you? How are you going to get out of here?”

  “Don’t worry about me, Mark. Let Victor come after me now. I’ll be ready.”

  CHAPTER

  37

  “What’s in the file?” Tolman asked, her hands trembling a little. She was in the front passenger seat of the Jeep, Sharp driving. Journey, Andrew, and Sandra were wedged into the back. Andrew was being very loud, and Tolman had to put a finger in one ear to hear Duke on the phone.

  “It’s a spreadsheet,” Duke said. “It’s money. Oh, man … look, here’s the account that we found in the White House with all that money in it. Hoo boy, look at this … it has all the transfers into the account, and all the source accounts. These things … wait a minute, I’m scrolling down now. The deposits go back about four years. Man, that’s a shitload of money.”

  Tolman’s heart was racing. She looked over her shoulder at Journey. “Barry found it. Barry found all the money. That was GAO’s job, government accountability. Somehow he came across those accounts, and he tracked them to the source.” She spoke into the phone again. “Duke, tell me about the source accounts. Did he name them?”

  “Hell, yeah,” Duke said. “They all started with an account belonging to Panhandle Mining at a bank in Memphis, Texas. Then they go to a bunch of other accounts, mostly in New York. There are a few more layers, then they feed the White House account number. There are dates of fund transfers … it’s really detailed. This guy was good.”

  Tolman closed her eyes. A bean counter, Dana had laughingly called her brother. A minor bureaucrat.

  Tolman could see it: Barry Cable, GAO auditor, had come across some irregularities with White House accounts and began to investigate. He found enormous sums of money, money that no one acknowledged, money earmarked for the highest levels of power. Money that came from a silver mine in West Texas. He began to build a case, documenting everything he found, placing it in an encrypted file.

  And eventually, someone realized he was onto the scheme. Someone figured out that Barry Cable could bring it all down, exposing their dirty money.

  So Ann Gray recruited four losers who hated the U.S. government, coached them, trained them, used them to kill Barry Cable—making it look like an antigovernment terrorist attack.

  But Barry, in the last seconds of his life, e-mailed the file to someone he knew he could trust: his brother.

  “I tried to stop his death as well,” Gray had said on the phone.

  “No, I did not kill her,” she’d said of Dana.

  Then who did?

  “So what did they do with the money?” she said aloud.

  “Don’t know,” Duke said in her ear.

  Hundreds of millions of dollars. That kind of cash could buy a lot of influence. That kind of cash could effectively buy the White House. Tolman shivered.

  “Duke,” Tolman said slowly, “this file has names and dates and amounts. Don’t say anything to anyone. You get how serious this is?”

  “No shit,” Duke said. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Forward the file to me with the encryption key. Also make a copy. Make two copies. Store them in different places. Things may get very, very bad.”

  “Things are pretty damn bad already,” Duke said.

  But then the paradox reared up at Tolman. Someone leaked the existence of the mine to the French, and April 19—the group created for the sole purpose of eliminating Barry Cable and protecting the existence of the scheme—was claiming credit for blowing up buildings. Why was Ann Gray giving them the tools to expose her own secret operation?

  “You have everything you need,” she’d said on the phone.

  “They may get worse,” Tolman said, and hung up the phone.

  * * *

  Zale’s three men in Oklahoma City traveled under the names of Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan. Fillmore was alone in a silver Ford F-150 pickup truck at the corner of Southwest Seventy-fourth Street and Regina Avenue at the western edge of the airport. After moving into position, he’d pulled to the shoulder and pretended to study a map. Pierce and Buchanan were in a Chevy Suburban north of the intersection, at a turnout of the entrance to the FAA’s Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center, where many of the nation’s air traffic controllers came for training.

  Their orders were clear and succinct. They did not know why, but as part of The Associates’ operational task force, they were to take out Margaret Isabell Tolman and Nick Allen Journey and anyone who was with them. Zale had been clear on that point. He’d also been clear that their colleague Jackson had been put in the hospital Saturday night because of this same group of people.

  Fillmore saw the dusty Jeep Cherokee come to the light at the corner, across the street from his position. The right turn signal went on. Fillmore smiled. They were correct. Journey and Tolman—who, according to his visual of the Jeep, had at least three other people in the car with them—would leave the airport complex and head north toward the highway. Their intelligence was good.

  Fillmore spoke into his secure cell and said, “Subjects are turning north. Visual ID confirmed of the Jeep. Five inside. I’ll fall in behind. Wait for my mark. Let’s get clear of the immediate airport vicinity first.”

  “Affirmative,” Buchanan said.

  The Jeep turned north. Fillmore pulled into the flow of traffic and followed.

  * * *

  Sharp drove, with Journey directing him from the backseat. They were going to drop him and Sandra and Andrew in Carpenter Center, where Journey would make arrangements for Andrew. He didn’t know what the arrangements were yet, but Tolman was impressed that he was going to find someone to stay with his son. Complete games, indeed, she thought.

  A few yards before the main entrance to the FAA center, a black SUV pulled in front of the Jeep. Sharp slowed, checking the traffic, his eyes always in motion. The M&P340 was on the dash, his rifle between the seats.

  The street curved and crossed another thoroughfare, becoming MacArthur Boulevard as it wound north. As the Jeep cleared the cross street, Sharp said, “Company.”

  Tolman was doing something on her laptop, and she snapped her head up. “What?”

  “Front and back,” Sharp said. “Don’t like the way they’re driving.”

  The SUV in front had slowed to a crawl. The truck was less than half a car length behind them. Sharp checked over his shoulder and moved into the left lane to pass the SUV. It matched his speed.

  “Uh-huh,” Sharp said. He pulled the M&P340 down from the dash and put it in his lap. A traffic light was coming at Southwest Forty-fourth. Ahead to the left was a large oilfield supply company, with a huge fenced yard containing pipes and other equipment.

  Journey squeezed Andrew’s hand. Sandra’s hand touched his shoulder. He turned, looked into her huge green eyes, and shrugged. Tolman looked back at both of them. She wished Journey still had his baseball bat.

  * * *

  Pierce was driving the SUV, and he sped up when the Jeep’s dr
iver, a big guy with a shaven head, pulled out to pass. Pierce glanced into the Jeep and spoke into his radio. “Positive ID on the subjects. There’s a kid in the backseat.”

  Fillmore waited before replying. “Orders say everyone.”

  “Even the kid?”

  “Orders are for everyone.”

  Pierce clicked off the radio. “Ah, hell,” he said to himself.

  Ten seconds went by. The three vehicles were approaching the light at Forty-fourth. For the moment, the street was clear on all sides.

  “Now,” Fillmore said.

  Buchanan’s pistol was in his hand. Pierce’s was at his side. Behind them, Fillmore had a rifle. Pierce slammed on the brakes.

  * * *

  Sharp acted on reflex, sensing something was about to happen. He twisted the steering wheel to the left and floored the accelerator. A split second later he saw the SUV’s brake lights. “Hang on,” he said, barely above a whisper.

  The Jeep shot across three lanes of traffic and jumped the curb, angling toward the oilfield business. The SUV sped up and spun to the left, trying to cut off the Jeep. The driver laid a trail of rubber across MacArthur, jumped the light, and spun around to face the Jeep.

  Journey looked behind. The truck was stopped, the driver’s door open. He saw the driver raising the rifle.

  “Get down!” Journey shouted, instinctively grabbing both Andrew’s and Sandra’s heads.

  The back glass of the Jeep shattered and the bullet thudded into the floorboard, no more than a foot behind the backseat. Tolman whipped around, her SIG in her hand. “Stay down,” she said. “Darrell—”

  Journey heard another shot from the other direction. Sharp spun the wheel and braked hard.

  “Gotta get out,” he muttered, grabbing both rifle and pistol. He kicked open the driver’s door and immediately went into a crouch, using the Jeep as a shield. Its grill was inches from the fence. Tolman lowered her head, staying in the Jeep.

  Andrew let out a mighty scream and tumbled out of his seat. Journey realized the boy had released the catch on his seat belt. It was something Andrew had learned to do only recently, and Journey had had to reattach Andrew’s belt many times, as he would undo it while the car was in motion. Andrew had seemed proud of his new skill.

  In an instinctive motion, Andrew opened his car door. To his mind, Journey thought, that was what you did when a car stopped. He raced out.

  “No!” Journey screamed, fumbling at his own belt. But Sandra was quicker, and without hesitation she took off after Andrew.

  Andrew ran ten steps toward the street, then froze. He looked over his shoulder toward his father, a smile on his face. Journey undid his belt, but Sandra was ahead of him.

  It didn’t happen in slow motion. It was almost the exact opposite, Journey thought, as he saw Sandra running, both arms outstretched, mouthing Andrew’s name. He saw the gunman from the truck running toward them, stopping, taking aim.

  Sharp’s voice: “Hey!”

  Then, a shot from the other direction. Then another, though it sounded different, as if it had been fired from another gun, louder than the first. He heard a body falling, but his eyes were fixed on Andrew and Sandra.

  Sandra reached Andrew, stepped in front of him, and grabbed one of his arms, moving him away from the gunman. The gunman from the truck fired, and Journey shouted wordlessly as he saw the shot explode into Sandra Kelly’s chest.

  CHAPTER

  38

  Journey was three long steps behind, and he felt his legs go out from under him. He crawled the rest of the way, pulling Andrew down and tripping over Sandra’s legs. The blood was everywhere—Sandra had been wearing one of her tie-dyed T-shirts, and now it was soaked in red, above her right breast.

  “No, no, no!” he shouted, and looked up in time to see Darrell Sharp charging around the edge of the Jeep with a look of pure and unadulterated rage in his eyes. Journey had never seen such an expression on the face of another human being—and in fact, it seemed almost inhuman to him. Sharp had his M&P340 in one hand and the FN rifle in the other. The gunman in the street was aiming again, cool, confident.

  Journey couldn’t tell which gun Sharp fired, but the top of the gunman’s head exploded. The rifle slid out of his hands as if it had been greased, but he didn’t fall, wobbling on his legs. Sharp fired again, and the rest of the man’s head was gone as he toppled to the side. Sharp fired again and then again, and all of the assassin’s clothes were soaked in blood. When the man fell, Sharp whipped around.

  “Okay?” he said.

  Journey couldn’t speak, staring at the carnage of the assassin in front of him. Underneath him, Andrew whimpered, a strange sound, not one of his typical vocalizations. Not fear, exactly, but a lack of understanding, an uncertainty, as if Andrew knew something bad had happened here, but he didn’t know what.

  Journey raised his head a couple of inches. He couldn’t see Tolman, but he saw one body in the street beside the SUV. Then he saw her unmistakable blond hair rise up from beside the Jeep’s right front tire. Her SIG was still in her hand. The Jeep’s headlight was shattered.

  “There’s still one!” she shouted.

  Journey heard sirens, not distant, but almost on top of them. He saw movement from inside the fence, people at the periphery of his vision, workers from the oilfield company. Voices reached him, indistinct but urgent. Two Oklahoma City police units screamed into the intersection of Forty-fourth and MacArthur, one from the north, one from the east. Other traffic was to the side, none moving.

  Officers spilled out of the police cars.

  “I’m a federal officer!” Tolman screamed. “We’re under attack!” She pointed with her SIG at the SUV.

  * * *

  Pierce shuddered. He’d thought Fillmore was going to get the kid, and he secretly hoped for something to happen … anything. Fillmore was a hard son of a bitch, didn’t seem to care about the kid. Pierce had breathed a sigh of relief when he shot the tall red-haired woman instead. She threw herself right in front of the kid. Pierce wondered if she was the boy’s mother.

  But now … now the cops were here. The big bald guy, the one who’d destroyed Fillmore a moment later, had taken down Buchanan.

  Now it was only Pierce, and cops were fanning out into the street.

  Our goddamn intelligence wasn’t so good after all, he thought as he crouched behind the open door of the SUV. We were told that maybe Tolman would have a pistol, Journey a baseball bat. But the bald guy had some serious weaponry and clearly knew how to use it … who the hell is he?

  If he went back like this, Victor Zale would kill him. Would probably pull out the Les Baer 1911 he was so proud of, the one with the ivory grip, and shoot him, right in the middle of The Associates’ office.

  Hell of a choice.

  Pierce checked his weapon, stood up, and came out shooting.

  He heard all the things he expected to hear: Drop it! Drop the weapon!

  He fired in all directions, getting off one decent shot that took down a cop who was moving in beside the traffic light pole. The guy went down quick, and Pierce thought it was a kill. But then he heard shots from all directions and felt the pain in his ribs. He staggered, but was determined to get off more shots.

  He aimed at Tolman, but now he was wounded and wobbling and she was running straight at him.

  Good God, she’s tiny, he thought, and felt disgusted. He was going to let himself get killed by a woman who was barely five feet tall. He swung his gun arm around.

  “Don’t do it!” Tolman shouted at him.

  Pierce snorted.

  “Who do you work for?” Tolman said.

  Pierce squeezed another shot, but his balance was bad and the shot went way high.

  “Do you work for Ann Gray?” Tolman said. She was fifteen steps away, now twelve, ten …

  Pierce looked at her.

  “Noah Brandon?” Tolman said. “The CIA? Who?”

  It’s all over, he thought. The pain in his side was b
linding, and he was about to go down. His legs wouldn’t work. He fired at Tolman and she fired at him.

  “The Associates,” he said, and he felt the weight in his chest. Then Pierce went down.

  * * *

  The noise was everywhere now … cars coming and going, voices, screams, sobs. But the ringing in Journey’s ears from the gunfire had stopped. Sharp knelt next to him, and at first he recoiled, remembering the rage on the big man’s face a few seconds ago, the way he’d kept shooting the other man. But Sharp’s eyes were normal now, guarded, cautious, wary. He looked human again.

  Sharp pulled off his T-shirt and wrapped it around Sandra’s wound, looping it under her arm to stop the blood flow. Journey glanced at Sharp, noticing the scar tissue on his stomach.

  “She’s alive,” Sharp said, and that was all.

  Sandra was breathing, but it was labored. “Sandra,” Journey said, then said it over and over again. Andrew was sitting on the ground beside him, rocking silently back and forth. The boy looked at his father with real concern, then reached toward Sandra’s head and touched her hair.

  “Okay,” Sandra managed to whisper. “Andrew okay?”

  She turned her head, and a little sound of pain, a sharp stab of a sound, escaped her. She saw Andrew, but couldn’t feel him touching her hair.

  “He’s fine,” Journey said. “You—”

  “Shhh,” Sandra said. “Later.” Journey could see she was struggling not to pass out. He moved a couple of steps away, giving the paramedics room to work. Her blood was all over him. He reached out for Andrew, who let himself be held. Journey couldn’t tell what anyone was saying—they were all talking at the same time.

  He looked at Sharp, who had gently put his weapons on the grass and showed his hands to the officers. Sharp looked his way. “He was going to shoot your little boy,” the big man said. “He shouldn’t have done that.”

  * * *

  “The Associates,” Tolman said. “What the hell does that mean?”

  One of the local cops was screaming at her. “Gun on the ground in front of you!”

  Tolman complied and said, “I’m a federal officer. Meg Tolman, deputy director, Research and Investigations Office, Washington. My ID is in my purse, in the Jeep, on the passenger side.”