by Clancy, Tom
“Darrell, can you hear me?”
McCaskey snatched the phone. “Yeah, Bob!”
“We’re getting a thermal spike from the DSP,” he said.
“Meaning?” McCaskey asked just as he heard horns in the oncoming lane. Cars around the Mustang were stopping. “Never mind,” he said. “I can see it. She torched the damn thing!”
“What?”
“There’s smoke coming from the closed windows!” McCaskey said. “She must have snuck out when the car stopped. Can you get a visual on her?”
“No,” Herbert said. “We’ve got cloud cover on the natural-light camera.”
“All right. Call 911. I’ve got to find her.”
McCaskey started running. People who could not maneuver away from the Mustang were leaving their cars and hurrying away on foot. A man in a Ram 1500 had pulled off on the shoulder, five car lengths back. He was rushing over with a fire extinguisher. Just then, McCaskey saw red lights flash behind him. He turned and saw Maria standing on the roof of their car. She was tossing road flares, trying to get his attention. His wife must have noticed the smoke and stopped. She was gesturing toward the Ram. Through the smoke McCaskey could just make out someone climbing into the cab. That had to be Lucy. The Ram had a 5.7-liter HEMI Magnum engine. It was a truck with cojónes. The vehicle would take the driver through cars and off road with no trouble.
Flames curled from the tops of the windows of the Mustang. The Ram driver hit it with a blast from the fire extinguisher. As he did, the windshield cracked from the heat, the spiderweb pattern shooting out from the center. A fire started with a cigarette lighter and whatever was lying around should not have gotten so hot so fast. She must have used an accelerant—
She was going to the airport, McCaskey realized. She had sprayed the contents of an aerosol can, hairspray or deodorant, in carry-on luggage.
McCaskey jumped the rail and grabbed the man about the waist and pushed him down just as the can itself exploded. It blew out the fragmented windshield and sent a small fireball rolling across the hood. Pieces of singed black Tumi luggage floated on the smoke like black snow. Former junkies might not be slick, but they knew household chemicals. They also knew how to distract the law.
McCaskey rose from the asphalt. “You all right?” he asked the other man.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
McCaskey was bruised but intact. He jumped around the front of the burning automobile. The Ram was coming toward them, along the shoulder. He tried to get in the back of the pickup as it passed, but he missed it.
Maria did not.
His wife had gotten back into the car and jabbed her way through traffic. When she was just a few yards from the oncoming Ram, she drove the car hard into the guardrail. The metal did not break, but it bulged just enough to clip the fender of the Ram, tearing it free on the passenger’s side. The chrome dug into the spinning front tire. At the same time, Maria accelerated against the guardrail, bending it more and locking the fender into the tire.
The Ram’s 345-horsepower engine screamed as the driver tried to push through the impasse. Before she could succeed, McCaskey was at the driver’s side door. He yanked it open and looked up at the face of desperation. He saw a woman who was crying so hard there was as much sweat along her scalp as there were tears on her cheeks. She was a woman so far over her pay grade that she was trembling all over, everywhere but her hands. Her fingers were bone white and locked around the steering wheel. She looked down at McCaskey.
“It wasn’t going to be like this,” she said, her voice an unsteady whisper. She looked back out the front window.
McCaskey climbed onto the step. He reached past her and turned off the ignition. With fire engines screaming behind him, it was difficult to hear. He leaned close. “What was not going to be like this?” he asked.
“They told me I would get exclusives,” Lucy said. “That’s all I wanted.”
“Who said that?”
She did not appear to hear. “They said I was putting him to sleep. They said that was what they wanted. They wanted me to mess up his room, make it look as if he had partied hard. They said he would be discredited.”
“Wilson, you mean,” McCaskey said.
Lucy did not answer. McCaskey turned her face gently toward him. “You gave William Wilson the injection.”
“Yes.”
“So you would have exclusive access to stories?”
She looked into his eyes. “They told me he wouldn’t be hurt. Not like Meyers.”
“Who is Meyers?” McCaskey asked.
“Richard Meyers. He was my boyfriend. We were on the beach three years ago in Corpus Christi. I gave him a speedball. He died.”
“They knew about this?” McCaskey asked.
“I ran.”
“They found out?” McCaskey asked.
“Yes.”
“So there was blackmail,” McCaskey asked.
Lucy nodded once.
The young woman, a junkie, had been in Texas. Someone must have found out and kept that information for future use. For blackmail. These guys must have been building their plan, their operation, for some time. “What about Mr. Lawless?”
“I did that, too,” Lucy replied. “I had to. They said they would turn me in if I didn’t. And then I had to put the dress in Kat’s apartment.” Lucy started to cry. “I didn’t want to hurt Kat. I like her.”
“Who told you to do all that?” McCaskey asked.
“She told me I would have to write only good things about them or I would go to prison for murder,” Lucy said. “I got stuck. I didn’t know how to get out.”
“Lucy, who did you speak with? Admiral Link? Senator Orr? Someone who works for one of them?”
“A woman.”
“Do you know which woman?”
“No,” Lucy said.
“What number did she call?”
“My cell phone,” Lucy said.
“Okay,” McCaskey said. “Now I want you to stay here. Someone will come for you. You have to believe I’m going to try to help you, all right?”
“All right,” she said blankly.
McCaskey gave her a reassuring pat on the back of her tense hand. Then he stepped back onto the highway. The police were making their way through traffic. Maria was standing there. Behind her, the airbag of the car had inflated.
“Nice move,” he said. “Are you hurt?”
“No. You?”
“No.”
McCaskey kissed his wife on the forehead and reached for his cell phone. It was gone. Poor Bob was probably mad with concern and madder with confusion. McCaskey hurried ahead. He needed to get a phone so he could call the intelligence chief. He showed one of the police officers his Op-Center ID. The man loaned him his phone. McCaskey said he would return it later.
McCaskey did not call Bob Herbert’s phone because the line was probably still open. Instead, he called the Tank. Bugs Benet answered. He asked Hood’s assistant to have Herbert find out who called Lucy O’Connor’s cell phone within a half hour of the murder of William Wilson.
“Will do,” Bugs said. “How can we reach you?”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “Keep an ear to the ground for Mike.” McCaskey wasn’t being heroic, just practical. He had a feeling that whether he was about to resign or not, Mike Rodgers was the one who would have to carry this ball in for the touchdown.
FIFTY
San Diego, California Wednesday, 3:45 P.M.
Inevitably, out of chaos comes order. The only two questions are when and at what cost?
Chaos evolved quickly in the hotel lobby, as it always does. One convention-goer carried it to three who carried it to nine. When chaos spreads, Mike Rodgers knew that the most important thing was not to try to contain it. Security had called the police, and reinforcements were on the way. Their presence would emphasize what was already an extraordinary situation and remove whatever remained of normalcy. That would merely put the same amount of tumult in a more confine
d space. And chaos tended to leap whatever firebreaks were placed around it. The task at hand was to eliminate the cause, not to contain the result.
The cause was shock about the apparent abduction of Admiral Kenneth Link and uncertainty about who did it or why. Mike Rodgers wanted to get on the problem right away. And not just to help eliminate the panic. Apparently, this was related to whatever the hell had started in Washington just four days ago.
Rodgers walked over to a relatively quiet corner near the magazine stand. He called the office of General Jack Breen at Pendleton. Breen said it was good to hear from his old friend.
“Where are you?” the marine general asked.
“San Diego,” Rodgers replied.
“San Diego? I hear there’s noise in that area. Yours?”
“Indirectly,” Rodgers said. “Jack, I need air recon ASAP. Something with eyes and teeth. We believe Admiral Kenneth Link has been kidnapped from the hotel here.”
“Details?”
“He was in a limo, that’s all I know. I don’t know what kind. I wouldn’t trust anyone to give me the right information anyway,” Rodgers said.
“I’m requisitioning an Apache on the e-command link as we speak,” Breen said. “Do you think there will be a ransom request or is this a GAT?”
GAT was grab and terminate. It was a military adaptation of the Mafia acronym SAW, snatch and whack.
“I don’t know, which is why we need to try to find the limo,” Rodgers said. “Can they pick me up somewhere around here?”
“Roof of the convention center, ten minutes,” Breen said. “What kind of manpower do you need?”
“Full suit?”
That was thirteen men. Breen said he would provide that.
“Perfect,” Rodgers said. “I’ll be there.”
“We’ll plan to cover the routes east,” Breen said. “The police will have plenty of resources deployed north along 405 headed up to Los Angeles and south to Mexico,” Breen said. “I doubt kidnappers would want to get into the traffic or border check along that corridor anyway.”
“Agreed,” Rodgers said as his phone beeped. That meant there was an incoming call. “General, I’ll see your boys in ten.” Rodgers jogged from the lobby as he switched to the other call. “Yes?”
“Mike, it’s Darrell.”
“Have you got something?” Rodgers asked.
“Yes. It sounds like you’re running.”
“I am,” Rodgers told him. “I’m organizing recon. It seems Admiral Link was just kidnapped.”
“He was? That’s surprising.”
“Why?”
“Because we just busted Lucy O’Connor,” McCaskey told him. “She confessed to giving those men the injections. Within a half hour of the first, she received a call from Admiral Link’s office phone.”
“Who did Lucy talk to?”
“She doesn’t know,” McCaskey said. “Only that it was a woman.”
“I’m not sure if that means anything,” Rodgers said. “Anyone could have used his phone.”
“Not without his authorization code,” McCaskey said. “We checked. No one in the office has that except Link.”
“Were there calls after the second incident?” Rodgers asked.
“No, they were being very careful then,” McCaskey said. “The criminal nature of the first action had already been uncovered. The perps would have been much more cautious the next day.”
“Would they really have been that cavalier about murder?” Rodgers asked.
“Yeah,” McCaskey said. “They had plausible deniability. Lucy could have gone up there and done it for a story.”
“Okay. But why do it at all? Does Lucy have any idea?”
“Lucy appears to be suffering from a mild form of narcosis, probably due to something in the barbiturate family,” McCaskey said. “I used to see the same speech and slowed reactions in the street.”
“Could someone on Orr’s staff have been providing her with drugs?” Rodgers asked. “That might have provided them with leverage.”
“We checked. She scored those on her own, an old connection. We found the guy through his parole officer.”
“What’s your guess, then?” Rodgers asked.
“You mean a unified theory?” McCaskey asked.
“As unified as you can be over an open line,” Rodgers said.
“Mike, I wish I knew. Someone in the senator’s office wanted the first victim dead. Then they killed some random tourist to make it look like the first murder was not related to the big man or his party. Our reporter friend was in it for perks and as a patsy, if necessary. If I said anything beyond that, I would be making pretty big assumptions.”
“Make them,” Rodgers said as he ran along Harbor Drive. The wide road bordered the bay. The convention center was just ahead. In the distance he heard the unmistakable bass thumping of an incoming helicopter.
“Mike, what is homicide or abduction always about? Power. Revenge. Jealousy. Money,” McCaskey said. “At the Bureau we used to assign a team to each of those and follow it back to a source.”
“I don’t have a team,” Rodgers said. “Hell, when this is over, I may not even have a job.”
“I know.”
“Darrell—a hunch. Give me something.”
McCaskey sighed. “We’re talking about a politician who is already wealthy, who has never had a scandal attached to his marriage, who has the respect of his colleagues. If he is behind it, I am guessing it is for power.”
“And the admiral?”
“You know him better than I do, Mike,” McCaskey replied. “But think about it. He has had control over intelligence. That is real power. He knows what it tastes like.”
The sounds of the chopper and his own hard breathing made it difficult for Rodgers to hear. Since McCaskey had access to the national news and the FBI pipeline, Rodgers asked him to call at once if he heard anything about a ransom demand. Barring that, Rodgers said he would call as soon as he had a lead or even a new idea. The general vowed he would get one if he had to dangle Eric Stone from the open hatch of the Apache.
Which is not the worst idea you have had today, he told himself. Assuming he could find the bastard. Stone had vanished within moments of the report.
Rodgers could hear the higher-pitched whir of the police helicopters moving along the San Diego Freeway. Two hovered above Lindbergh Field in case the limousine had gone there, and two more from the Harbor Patrol were moving out to sea. Perhaps the kidnappers intended to fly Admiral Link from the area. There were sirens on the Pacific Coast Highway, which paralleled Harbor Drive. Convention security personnel were running here and there, shouting into walkie-talkies and trying to keep order around the convention center itself. They were apparently being told to keep people in the area. Having another four or five thousand attendees in the streets would only complicate rescue efforts.
Rodgers reached the eastern entrance of the convention center as the Marine helicopter landed. He showed one of the security guards his USF ID as well as his Op-Center ID. He was allowed inside. A wide, sunlit, concrete-heavy gallery circled the massive convention area. It was thick with refreshment stands, media booths, and USF vendors. People were standing around, just as they were in the hotel lobby, trying to pick up information and voicing theories as to who might be behind this. “Damn foreigners” was the expression Rodgers seemed to hear most.
It would be ironic if that were the case. International enemies of the USF Party were something Mike Rodgers had not even considered. Or someone seeking revenge for William Wilson, perhaps?
No, Rodgers decided. Something like this would have been planned for some time. The abductors would have had to know Link’s schedule, been able to get to the limousine driver and take him out, and had a hideout or escape route ready. The kidnappers would have made dry runs.
Rodgers started up the concrete stairs that led to the top of the convention center. He was tired, but years of training with Striker had kept him in top physic
al condition. The door to the roof was a fire exit. It was unlocked. Rodgers stepped out. The chopper was about fifty yards away. Rodgers waved to the pilot, who acknowledged with a salute. The general ran toward the Apache, ducking into the heavy prop wash.
Suddenly, Rodgers stopped.
The abduction needed a plan, he thought.
Was the answer right in front of him? He looked out at the city from the top of the convention center. Red and blue police lights spotted the main roads and highways. Helicopters were being swallowed in the smoggy inland skies. A great security machine was in motion.
But would it be enough?
With renewed urgency, Rodgers resumed his sprint toward the chopper.
FIFTY-ONE
Washington, D.C. Wednesday, 7:08 P.M.
Reluctantly, Bob Herbert had moved his laptop operation to the Tank. McCaskey had informed him about the latest developments and he wanted to be directly involved in the operation. Besides, the winds in the parking lot had picked up, and there was an unpleasant chill on his back. And, as the engineers from Andrews put it, they needed someone to test the elevator with a load inside. Everyone else was still using the stairs. The tech boys had been working on the lift for three hours and told him everything seemed to be functioning. None of them had ridden it yet because they did not have the proper security clearance. Most of Op-Center had been fried, but protocol was still protocol.
Before heading downstairs, the intelligence chief phoned Stephen Viens. The surveillance operations officer was still at the NRO. Herbert asked him to see if any of the navy satellites had picked up the limousine in back of Link’s hotel. Security recon was pretty thorough in the region because of the naval station, the naval submarine base, and the many inland operations facilities such as Fleet Technical Support Center Pacific and the Intelligence and War-Sim Center in nearby Riverside County. Viens said he would report back if he found anything.