by Stuart Woods
“You’re staying away from that, I hope,” Will said.
“Wouldn’t touch it with a fork,” Tom replied. “These are just rumors, of course, but I wouldn’t be sad to see those commercials happen.”
“Don’t let anybody ever hear you say that,” Will said. “I want us to run our own campaign, without any attacks on anybody.”
“Spanner seems like the kind of guy who would have something in his background that would come out in a campaign,” Sam Meriwether said.
“If that’s so, then let it come out without our help,” Will said.
“I’ll bet there’s something sexual,” Kitty Conroy said. “He’s too good-looking not to have dallied with the ladies at some point in his marriage.”
“Let’s not count on anything like that,” Will said. He wanted terribly to tell them about the Afghanistan mission.
Tom Black was looking at him oddly. “Mr. President,” he said, “you look worried. Is there something you want to give us a heads-up on? Something that might affect the election?”
Will took a beat to think about that, then replied, “No.”
TODD BACON SAT in his rented pickup at the edge of the landing strip on Cumberland Island and watched a King Air, a twin-engine turboprop, set down on the grass-and-sand strip, followed a few minutes later by a Cessna 340, then a Beech Baron. These aircraft disgorged their passengers who were met by cars ferried from the mainland in the inn’s old World War II landing craft and then driven north toward the slave village.
The reverend’s published schedule on the Internet said that he was leading a prayer service on the front lawn of Plum Manor, the empty Palladian mansion on the north end of the island, immediately before the wedding, so Todd got the pickup started and drove toward the slave village.
TEDDY FAY HAD some breakfast from a cooler aboard his airplane, then slipped on a light backpack and began hiking toward the slave village. After half an hour’s walk, he sat down on a fallen tree and checked his equipment. His transmitter had a range of a mile, but he had stopped half a mile from the village. He could do everything from here, guaranteeing himself a clean getaway. Television news had told him that the Reverend Henry King Johnson had not requested Secret Service protection, and Teddy was relieved about that.
TODD REACHED the deserted slave village and got out of the pickup. He walked from cabin to cabin, checking each one thoroughly, then walked to the church and went inside. Two ladies, one white and one black, were arranging flowers at the altar, and they greeted him politely.
“Are you part of the wedding party?” one asked him.
“No,” Todd replied, “I’m a guest at the inn, and I was just taking a little tour of the island. Is there a wedding today?”
“Yes, and they should be arriving any minute,” one woman said, consulting her watch.
“I wish the couple every happiness, then,” Todd said, and left the church. He walked slowly around the little building. It was set on stone pilings about four feet high, elevating the building over the rest of the village. The area from the floor of the church to the ground was covered with wooden latticework. Everything looked in order here, but Todd wanted to walk the perimeter of the village and check for intruders. He pulled the Sig pistol from his belt and checked its readiness, then kept it in his hand as he walked. From what the late Owen Masters had told him, his chances in an encounter with Teddy Fay would be poor, and he wanted to improve the odds.
He walked as silently as he could, looking as far into the trees as he could see, looking for wires on the ground or anything that could mark a danger.
He heard car doors slamming and looked toward the village to see the tall, handsome Reverend Johnson get out of a car and walk toward the church. He went inside, followed by the small procession of the wedding party, no more than a dozen people.
As Todd watched, rays of sunshine broke through a cloud and illuminated the building. The effect was theatrical, as if God were personally blessing this union, turning his own spotlight upon it. And then Todd saw, under the building, illuminated by the sunshine, the tank.
58
FOR JUST A MOMENT, TODD FROZE. HE MUST GET THOSE PEOPLE OUT OF THE church, he thought. Then he changed his mind and began running. He tore around the church to the rear of the little building and began pulling at the latticework surrounding the crawl space. It was nailed firmly on, but by bracing a foot against a post he got a corner loose.
A large black man in a suit and tie came around the corner of the building. “Hey, what are you doing there?” he yelled.
“Help me get this off!” Todd yelled at him.
“What are you doing?”
“There’s a large bomb under this church, and if I don’t get to it in time, we’re all going to die.”
The man grabbed the latticework next to Todd, and they pulled together. The extra weight and strength did the job, and the latticework came away, dumping both men on their backs.
Todd scrambled to his feet and dove under the church, crawling as fast as he could.
“What can I do?” the man behind him yelled.
“Get those people out of the church and as far away from it as possible!” Todd yelled back. He reached the propane tank and found something electronic fastened to it with duct tape. The device had a flashing light and a short antenna. Todd got his Swiss Army knife out of a pocket and a blade open, and with one hand, he grasped the antenna in his fist, hoping that would keep it from receiving. With the other hand he sawed at the duct tape.
TEDDY HAD GOTTEN close enough to the church to hear the cars stop and the wedding party walking up the wooden steps of the building. He gave them another two minutes, then held up his remote control and flipped a switch. To his surprise, nothing happened. He flipped the switch off, then on. Still nothing. Teddy didn’t understand; he had built these two devices himself and had tested them thoroughly the day before. Maybe he had miscalculated the range. He started walking toward the church, switching the remote on and off.
TODD WORKED HIS WAY through the tape, and finally the device came away in his hand. He could hear running feet above his head as the wedding party fled the church.
Still grasping the antenna, he scurried from under the church on his knees and elbows, got to his feet, and began running away from the building. When he was fifty yards away, he flung the device as far as he could and kept running. It exploded before it hit the ground, sounding like a big firecracker and pelting Todd with bits of plastic as he ran toward the pickup truck. He had no wish for a conversation with either the wedding party or the law enforcement people who would, eventually, show up.
He got into the truck, started it, and backed down the road for fifty yards before he could turn around and start back toward the airstrip. Then, suddenly, he slammed on the brakes and came to a halt.
Teddy Fay had not landed on the Cumberland Island airstrip, Todd was certain of that. But if not, then how had he gotten here? By boat? Todd doubted it. Then it came to him: the beach. Teddy had landed on the beach. There were eighteen miles of firm sand with nothing to impede an airplane.
Todd got the truck going again, then, as he approached the landing strip, he turned left on a road that led to a beach house.
TEDDY HEARD THE BANG and saw smoke rise from the charge, but it was not from the direction of the church, and the propane tank had not exploded. He could hear shouting ahead of him, and he turned and ran back toward the beach at a fast jog. He had most of a mile to go, and he didn’t want to exceed his fitness level. He ran along on some sort of animal path, which helped him move faster, sending a scared armadillo scurrying off into the brush.
He reached the airplane out of breath, and he stood, leaning on the fuselage and taking deep gulps of air until his blood began to reoxygenate. When he was steady on his feet again he tossed his backpack into the Cessna and began throwing aside the brush and palm fronds that hid the airplane.
When he had cleared everything away, he ran forward and grabbed the
tow bar that was still attached to the nosewheel and started to pull. It took all his remaining strength to get the airplane rolling, and it was slow going. As he got onto the firmer sand of the beach, the towing got easier, and the airplane moved faster. The tide was out, and Teddy pulled the aircraft onto the packed, wet sand left by the outgoing sea.
He got the tow bar undone from the nosewheel, placed it in the rear seat of the airplane, and got in. He sat, breathing hard and sweating from the exertion, trying to keep the sweat out of his eyes while priming the airplane’s engine.
He checked that the mixture was on full rich, cracked the throttle a quarter of an inch, and turned the ignition key. The propeller began to turn slowly, but the engine did not catch. He primed it a little more, then tried again. This time there was a cough from the engine, and it began to run roughly. He leaned it a little, until it ran smoothly, then got the airplane rolling along the wet sand. It was slow to pick up speed, but then the airspeed indicator came alive and read thirty knots. Then, to his astonishment, he looked down the beach and saw a pickup truck, all four wheels in the air, rocket over the crest of a dune, then hit the ground and wallow through the loose sand toward the beach.
What the hell? Teddy thought. Who was this? He shoved the throttle all the way in and added a notch of flaps. Forty knots.
The pickup reached the packed sand and turned north, toward the airplane, which was running south on the sand.
Fifty knots. He put in another notch of flaps for a soft-field takeoff and pulled the yoke back into his lap. Sixty knots. The airplane struggled off the sand and into the air, but Teddy kept it inches off the sand, in ground effect, while it gathered speed. He retracted the landing gear to decrease drag. The pickup truck was upon him, the fool at the wheel obviously planning to ram him. Then, for a split second, Teddy clearly saw the driver. It was that kid, Bacon, from Owen Masters’s staff.
Teddy jerked back on the yoke and cleared the pickup by inches, then he got the airplane into ground effect again, retracted a notch of flaps and let the airspeed build.
TODD BRAKED TO A HALT, PANTING. He couldn’t believe he had tried to drive the truck into a spinning propeller; if he had been successful, he would have been mincemeat. He spun the truck around and floored it, chasing the airplane. It was flying just above the beach and not all that fast. Maybe he could clip the tail with the front of the truck and crash it. Now he was gaining on the Cessna. Since he was behind it he couldn’t see the registration number, but he saw that it was a retractable. He was forty feet behind the airplane and closing fast, his speed nearly a hundred miles an hour on the speedometer.
THERE IS NO REARVIEW MIRROR on airplanes, so Teddy could not see the pickup coming. At ninety knots he pulled back on the yoke, and the airplane pulled away from the beach. Then, to Teddy’s astonishment, he saw the pickup in front of him, out the right side window. He retracted the last notch of flaps and kept climbing. Then he heard shots.
Todd was leaning out the window of the pickup, his pistol in his left hand, firing at the airplane as it pulled away from him. He emptied the magazine, and he had no idea if he had hit the thing.
TEDDY REACHED THE END of the island and kept going straight. He checked his fuel: both tanks were at three-quarters, and he had some in the ferry tank, too. He flew straight down the coast at five hundred feet, passing Fernandina Beach and Amelia Island. When his GPS told him he was thirty miles from Cumberland Island and well out of sight of the pickup, he went to the flight-plan page of the GPS and tapped in the code for a little airstrip he knew in the Bahamas. Then he descended to around twenty feet, set the altitude hold on his autopilot and the navigate button, and took his hands off the yoke.
He had over two hundred miles to go, but he had the fuel, and if he didn’t turn up on somebody’s look-down radar, he would be fine.
TODD BACON STOOD on the beach beside the pickup and watched the airplane disappear to the south. Then he reloaded his pistol, got out his BlackBerry, and dialed a number.
TEDDY WAS AN HOUR from the coast, with another hour to go when he noticed that the right wing tank was nearly empty. He looked out the right window and saw what appeared to be smoke trailing from the wing; it was a mist of fuel. The son of a bitch had gotten lucky and hit a tank, and a quick calculation told him it was unlikely that he would make the Bahamas. And he had no life raft aboard.
59
LANCE CABOT WAS WALKING INTO HIS OFFICE WHEN HE HEARD THE CHARACTERISTIC ring of his direct telephone line. He picked it up. “Yes?”
“It’s Bacon,” a voice said. “Scramble.”
Lance pressed the Scramble button. “I’m scrambled. What’s up?”
“I’m in Georgia,” Todd said.
Lance’s jaw dropped. “What the hell are you doing in Eastern Europe?”
“Not that Georgia, the other one, the one in the United States.”
“Same question,” Lance said, feeling his gorge rise, “and your answer better be good.”
“I’m at a place called Cumberland Island,” Todd said. “I pursued Teddy Fay here.”
“What?”
“I figured out where he was going and what he was going to do when he got there, so I followed.”
“You followed him back to the United States?”
“Yes. I figured out that he was in Atlanta or nearby and that he was going to assassinate the Reverend Henry King Johnson. Do you know who that is?”
“Of course I know who he is,” Lance snapped.
“Teddy has mostly killed right-wing political figures, but he figured Johnson was a threat to the president’s reelection. After killing Owen, he had to get out of Panama, so he went to Atlanta.”
“Todd, Teddy Fay is dead, and I don’t want you ever to mention his name to me or anyone else again. Is that clear?”
“No, he’s not dead. I saw him less than five minutes ago.”
Lance was speechless.
“You’d better let me tell you what’s happened, because I think you need to know about it before it hits the papers. Teddy tried to blow up a little church on this island where Johnson was scheduled to perform a wedding ceremony. He placed a propane tank with a detonator on it under the church, but I managed to find it and disable it before it went off. I pursued Teddy to the beach, where he had an airplane. I tried to stop him, but he managed to get the thing in the air and flew south.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Lance said.
“I was unable to see the registration number, but it was a Cessna 182 RG, mostly white. I fired at it, emptied a magazine, but I don’t know if I hit it.”
Lance began to regain himself. “Now you listen to me very carefully, Todd,” he said.
“I’m listening.”
“I don’t know how you got to the States, but . . .”
“I chartered a small jet.”
“I don’t care about that. Your orders are to get your ass back to Panama City immediately, if not sooner, and to stay there. You are not to discuss where you’ve been with anyone, nor are you to mention any theories you might have about Teddy Fay. Do you understand my orders?”
“I suppose.”
“Well, you’d better do more than suppose, or you’re going to find yourself in a much less attractive station than Panama City and at a much lower salary level than you are now. That, or you’ll find yourself on the street, and I can promise you that the street will be an inhospitable place. Am I beginning to get through to you?”
There was a brief silence. “Yes, sir,” Todd replied. “I think I understand perfectly.”
“Good, and you’d better go on doing so. Was anyone hurt in the explosion?”
“No, sir. Everybody got out of the church safely, and the church was undamaged.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“One man, a black gentleman, who helped me a little.”
“You were never there, do you understand?”
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
“How long ago did this happen?”
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“Twenty minutes, maybe half an hour.”
“Call me when you’re back in Panama City, and it had better be soon.” Lance hung up and thought for a moment. He turned to his computer and pulled up a classified list of every cell-phone number in the United States. He did a search and found one for Henry King Johnson, then dialed it, using an untraceable line.
The phone rang half a dozen times before it was answered. “Hello?” a deep, rich voice said.
“Mr. Johnson?”
“Yes? Who is this?”
“It’s very important that you not know,” Lance said. “In fact, this call never happened.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m aware that, a few minutes ago, you had a very close call.”
“How could you know that?”
“Have you called the local police yet?”
“No, but I’m certainly going to the moment I’m back in a place where there are police.”
“That would be very unwise,” Lance said.
“Are you insane?”
“Certainly not, but I must tell you that you are in no immediate danger. I must also tell you that, if you bring the police into this or if you continue to be a candidate, it will no longer be possible to protect you.”
“Protect me? Did you send the man who saved us from the bomb?”
“Suffice it to say that you were saved.”
Johnson was quiet for a moment. “Well, whoever you are, I thank you for that. What is it you want me to do?”
“Continue with the wedding, swear everyone present to secrecy, and forget this ever happened.”
“You want me to drop out of the race, don’t you?”
“I cannot tell you to do that. I can only tell you that you will be in very great danger if you continue. Now, I must say good-bye.” Lance hung up.