“So people built the shelters to protect themselves from a direct hit,” I said.
He laughed. “Yeah. Like if I shot a bazooka at you, and you protected yourself by wearing a heavy sweater.”
“They weren’t safe?” I asked.
“They were safe if there was a tornado, or a hurricane. But a nuclear missile landing nearby? No way. And you know what? If you were sitting under a nuclear attack, you’d never want to come up for air, because you’d be sucking poison. If you ask me, instant incineration is the way to go.”
“Have you ever been in one of the shelters?”
“Are you kidding? We had one under our house; my father built it himself. I took girls down there until I was twenty-two. I wish I lived there now.” He smiled at the recollection.
“Is it possible that there is one with satellite television hooked up?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Sure. Why not? Have the satellite on the house, or a nearby tree, and run the line down to the shelter. No problem. It could even be in a silo.”
“What do you mean?”
“Some people bought old silos, for beans, once the missiles were taken out. I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard they turned them into like underground apartments.” He laughed. “I even heard some people built homes next to them, and use the silos as guesthouses.” He laughed again. “I got some family I’d like to put underground when they visit.”
“Is there a map of where the shelters are?”
“No, not that I know of. I’m sure some of them would be registered in town halls, or something. You know, if people had to get permits to build them. But I’m sure most of them just went ahead and did it.”
“What about the silos? Is there a map of where they would be?”
Another shrug. “Must be. The Defense Department keeps records of everything.”
I turned to Emmit. “Let’s make sure we get that.”
Emmit wrote it down, which meant I could forget it. Once Emmit wrote something down, it happened.
“I can tell you where a couple of them are, if you want to see them,” Granderson said.
“How far from here?” Emmit asked.
“Twenty minutes.”
Granderson told us where they were, and how to get there. We thanked him and left.
True to his word, we were there in twenty minutes, an old sign directing us off the road to a US Military Installation, apparently unnamed. We drove on a dirt road towards it, and in less than five minutes we were there. It was a group of small buildings, maybe barracks, and six small towers.
We parked near one of the buildings, and walked towards the towers. Everything was old and dusty, metal was rusted … it sure didn’t feel like a place that once contained enough power to wipe out a good part of the world.
Emmit and I walked towards one of the towers, and saw what used to be the hole in the ground. It was very, very large, maybe thirty feet across, and it was covered by what could best be called an enormous concrete manhole cover.
There were still warning signs, some alerting to the dangers of radiation. It didn’t seem like a current worry, since the area hadn’t been roped off, but I did feel a flash of concern.
“You think this stuff could still be radioactive?” Emmit asked.
“Let’s put it this way,” I said. “You’ve been impotent since you got out of the car.”
He laughed, but the laugh was cut short by the bullet smashing into him. He fell backwards, and I dove on top of him, rolling us over to some level of protection, behind the tower.
“Emmit, you OK?”
He didn’t answer me, but his eyes were open, and the bleeding was coming from just below his shoulder. I balled up his shirt and pressed down on the wound with one hand, as I tried to peer out to where the attack had come from. I had my gun out in the other hand, but I had no target to shoot at.
Another round of weapons fire shattered the quiet, and dirt and concrete kicked out from all around us. We were in a completely untenable position; any effort to find the person shooting at us would leave me totally vulnerable.
But I had to do something, because Emmit could well have been dying. And the way things were setting up, I was going to join him.
I started to work my way around the tower, but more shots cut me off. Then I heard a sound; it was a human sound, maybe a small shout of surprise. Or pain. Or both.
I waited sixty seconds, which in that situation was an eternity. Then I started to make my way around again, bracing myself for more gunfire.
But there was only silence.
So I kept going, gun at the ready, prepared to shoot at anything I saw. And what I saw was a man, standing off in the distance near a building, looking down.
I raised my gun, but I didn’t shoot, because the man was Chris Gallagher. And he was looking down at a body.
Gallagher looked up at me, clearly not afraid of the gun in my hand.
He bent over and seemed to be searching the pockets of the person lying at his feet. I wanted to ask him what the hell was going on, but I had Emmit to worry about.
I took off in a run towards my car, and as I passed by Gallagher I yelled, “My partner’s been hit!”
Gallagher nodded and started running back towards where we had been. I continued on to my car, and drove it to where Emmit was lying, now with Gallagher beside him and pressing down on the wound. As I approached, Gallagher picked Emmit up. It seemed effortless, amazing since Emmit weighed more than two hundred and fifty pounds.
I helped Gallagher put Emmit into the backseat, closed the door, and ran back around to the driver’s side. As I passed by Gallagher, he slipped something into my hand. I didn’t look at it; I was too busy programming the GPS to find the nearest hospital.
It was seven miles away, and while en route I called in to Barone’s office to report what had happened, and to tell them to have the hospital waiting for our arrival.
I called to Emmit a few times, but he didn’t answer. I was hoping that he was just unconscious.
When we got there, I pulled up and was immediately surrounded by emergency personnel. The hospital appeared unimpressive, a one-level place that looked more like a veterinary hospital, but the people there had their act together.
Emmit was out of the car, on a gurney, and in the hospital within a minute. By the time I got inside, he was gone, and I had to ask the person behind the desk where they had taken him.
She asked me to fill out some papers, but I refused, at least for the time being. I wanted to be with Emmit, and she understood and directed me to the area where he was being treated.
I was in the waiting room for over an hour when Captain Barone and three other cops from our station showed up. “How is Emmit?” Barone asked.
“He’s in surgery. They’re not telling me anything, but he lost a lot of blood. Did you reach his wife?”
He shook his head. “She’s on a plane to Seattle to visit her parents. There’s a message for her to call in when she lands. Who did this?”
It was then that I realized that I hadn’t looked at whatever Gallagher had given me. I took it out of my pocket. It was a Nevada Driver’s License, in the name of Frank Kagan.
I showed it to Barone. “He did.”
“How do you know that? Where is he?”
“He’s dead. Chris Gallagher killed him.”
“Excuse me?”
“This guy had us pinned down. Emmit was hit and I was next. Gallagher was there, I don’t know why, but he killed him.”
I told Barone where it happened as best as I could, and he made a phone call to dispatch officers to the scene. Then we waited on Emmit.
It was another hour and forty minutes before the doctor came out to talk to us. “He’s going to make it. He may not go dancing any time soon, but he’s going to make it.”
He went on to say that no major organs were hit, but that Emmit had lost a lot of blood, and if he had gotten to the hospital ten minutes later, it might have been too late.
The bottom line was that Gallagher had saved Emmit’s life.
And mine as well.
Gallagher instantly regretted what he had done.
Intervening had not been a mistake, even though he was operating mostly on instinct. Kagan was going to kill those two cops, and Gallagher was not about to let that happen.
What he regretted was killing Kagan. He could have knocked him unconscious as easily as he broke his neck, and if he had, Kagan would have remained alive to answer Gallagher’s questions. And Gallagher had no doubt that Kagan would have found it in his best interest to answer them; Gallagher could be very persuasive that way.
But now it was too late for that; Kagan’s question-answering days were behind him. So now Gallagher would have to do the answering for him. He’d find out why Kagan was there to kill Somers and his partner, and he had no doubt it was related to the Brennan murder investigation.
Gallagher had a strong feeling that Kagan was military, just based on the way he handled his weapon, and how he chose the optimum spot and position to take out the cops. If he was right, it would make it easier for Gallagher to find out what he needed to know.
But Somers certainly had more resources at his disposal, which was why Gallagher gave him the driver’s license. They’d be able to track down Kagan’s history, and find out a great deal of information about him.
But Gallagher kept a prize for himself. It was a hotel key, a card that would provide entry to Kagan’s room at Cod Cove Inn. At that moment Gallagher had no idea where that was, as there was no address on the key. But he’d find it, and he’d get into the room. And once he did, if he learned anything that made sense to share with Somers, he could do so.
Gallagher placed a phone call to Lieutenant Linda Worley, a military police officer assigned to the Intelligence Unit at Quantico. Worley and Gallagher had briefly been stationed together in Germany about eight years prior. They almost had an affair, and would have, had not Worley remembered that she had a husband back in the states. They’d run into each other a few times in the intervening years, but not for long enough for anything to have happened.
“This is Gallagher,” he said, when she got on the phone.
“And this is a happy coincidence,” she replied. “I’ve been divorced six months.”
He laughed. “Well, if you give me some information, I just might work my way down there to see you.”
They bantered some more, until he got around to telling her what he needed. “There’s a guy named Frank Kagan, last known address Las Vegas; I need to know all there is to know about him.”
“What else have you got?”
“I think he was military.”
“Well, that narrows it right down,” she said.
“He’s maybe forty-two, and probably has a criminal record.”
Gallagher had a pang of conscience in asking her to help. She had no way of knowing that he had gone renegade; if she checked, his records would simply say that he was on leave. But before long the police, military and civilian, would be after him. It would come out that she’d helped him, and at the very least wouldn’t look good in her file.
She said that she’d get back to him, so he turned to his computer to find out where the Cod Cove Inn was. There were three of them in the Northeast, the closest being near Brayton. Having followed Lucas to Brayton and met Alex Hutchinson, he knew there wasn’t any need to check out the other Cod Cove Inns. That was the one.
Knowing that time was of the essence, Gallagher set out to drive to Brayton. He certainly wanted to examine the room, and there was always the chance that the police would find out where Kagan had been staying and seal the place off.
On the way, Gallagher thought about the possibility of extending the seven-day deadline, of bringing a replacement tank to supply air for Bryan Somers. Luke was making headway, and since the goal was to clear Steven, ending the process prematurely was counterproductive. Complicating the situation was Gallagher’s concern that when Somers was at the missile shaft he was also just six miles from the place his brother was imprisoned.
Gallagher wasn’t sure how they got so close, but he was confident they were still operating mostly in the dark. And close was not going to get it done for them.
Gallagher rejected, at least for the moment, any extension of the seven-day deadline. Either Luke would get it done in time or he wouldn’t. And if the latter was the case, then Gallagher would finish the job.
Bryan wouldn’t get an extension, because Steven did not get one.
* * *
The Cod Cove Inn could not have been set up better for Gallagher’s purposes. It was a relatively small, two-story place, with maybe fifty total rooms. The main office was in a small separate building, so there was really no way to monitor movement.
He decided to try the upper floor first. If Kagan was military, and had any concern about his safety, he would instinctively want the higher ground. The jump down was a small one, easily navigated, so escape would have been just as easy as from the ground floor.
He started in the back, near the exit, since that was where he would want to be. The parking lot had not seemed crowded, and the vacancy sign confirmed that the place was not filled. Kagan, within reason, should have been able to choose his location, and most people would have wanted to be towards the front, closer to the elevator.
He found the room on the second try; the little green light went on and the door opened. He entered and found it to be very neat, every piece of clothing carefully folded and placed in drawers. Definitely military.
But it was also a suite, or at least connected to an adjoining room, with the door between the two open. It didn’t take much examination of the belongings to know that two men were staying here, Kagan plus one other.
Gallagher started searching carefully but quickly. On the desk in one of the rooms was a briefcase, locked, which was no problem for Gallagher, since among his talents was one for picking locks. In this case he didn’t bother; he was able to rip the briefcase lid off with sheer strength.
Inside was a thick envelope containing copies of media reports of the court case in Brayton, biographical notes on the various players, what seemed to be land maps, and some kind of geological reports. This was outside of Gallagher’s area of expertise, but he would look at them later, when he had more time.
A short while later, in the adjoining room, he reached one of the closets and saw a large suitcase standing on its side. He felt that it was quite heavy, which surprised him, since both Kagan and his partner had obviously unpacked.
The suitcase was locked, and it took Gallagher only a couple of minutes to pick it. Inside was a large, metal box, which was also locked. After another three minutes, Gallagher had that opened as well, and he recognized what he was looking at immediately.
The box was divided into twelve compartments, all the same size. Two were filled with a substance that Gallagher recognized very well, C-245, one of the most powerful plastic explosives ever developed.
The other ten were empty.
Gallagher heard a noise out in the hall, and waited a moment to see if someone was going to enter the room. He hoped it was Kagan’s partner, because he would keep him alive until he answered every question Gallagher could think to ask. But it was a chambermaid, who recoiled in surprise when she saw Gallagher.
“Can I clean the room?” she asked.
“Yes, I was just leaving,” Gallagher said. He grabbed the envelope, the suitcase with the remaining explosives, and left.
I got your back, Bryan. Big news on this end. Someone shot at us today. My partner got hit, but he’ll be OK. Gallagher was there, and killed the shooter. I’ll get him to understand that we’ve scared some people and they want to shut us down.
The truth is in Brayton, New York. There’s a case that Brennan would have ruled on if he got to the court; they made sure he didn’t. Don’t know exactly who “they” are yet, but I will.
Before you know it you’ll be back at
work, enriching yourself and stealing from the little people.
And all I remember about that day at the lake was giving you mouth-to-mouth … I still have nightmares about it.
Don’t touch those pills, Brother. We’ll flush them down the toilet together.
I waited to talk to Emmit.
The doctor said he should be awake and coherent in about an hour, and I figured I could use the time to plan out my next moves.
My assumption was that Frank Kagan had been following us. Gallagher might have been following Kagan, but more likely he was following us as well. It was an embarrassment to me that we were obliviously leading a goddamn caravan around, but I’d get over it.
I had to assume that Kagan shot Emmit and had us pinned down. Gallagher must have come up behind him and killed him. I didn’t see any blood on Kagan, so it must have been done with bare hands. Gallagher’s reputation appeared justified.
I didn’t delude myself into thinking this changed the dynamic or balance of power between us. He didn’t save us because we were best buddies; he did it so I could continue my efforts to exonerate Steven. That’s why he gave me Kagan’s driver’s license; he was helping us along in the investigation.
My hope was that he would realize that we were getting somewhere, that Kagan came after us because he or, more likely, people who sent him were getting worried. My other hope was that Gallagher would move the seven-day deadline back, but I knew I couldn’t count on that.
But it wasn’t just a question of whether Gallagher thought we were getting somewhere; the fact was that we were. There could be no other explanation for it. Kagan would have been worth more to us alive, but just his identity might be enough to unlock the puzzle.
I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but there was only one person we could be scaring, and that was Richard Carlton. If I could establish a tangible connection between him and Kagan, I’d nail him to the wall with it. He could go fracking in his bathrobe on Rikers Island.
Airtight Page 12