Echo of War

by Grant Blackwood

  “Not that we have a choice,” Tanner replied. It wouldn’t take long for their pursuers to begin backtracking. “I’ll go first. If it breaks, you can catch me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  They pulled the box down until Tanner could squeeze through onto its roof. He clicked on his flashlight, clamped it between his teeth, then grabbed the rope and began climbing.

  Protected by the enclosed shaft, the rope had weathered the decades in surprisingly good condition. They took turns climbing, one of them braced in the shaft as the other shimmied upward, alternating until the uppermost hatch came into view.

  Feet and back pressed against the walls, Tanner slid open the hatch. Below him, Cahil inched upward until he was braced in position. “Go ahead.” Tanner placed his feet on Cahil’s shoulders, clicked off his flashlight, then stuck his head through the hatch and looked around. The tunnel was deserted. He closed his eyes to listen. Silence.

  Tanner boosted himself through the hatch, rolled onto the floor, then helped Cahil out.

  Down the tunnel they saw a glimmer of light. It panned left, then right, then winked out. Faint German voices called to one another. With Cahil following, Tanner crept down the tunnel to the second set of doors, which lay open.

  Compared to the relative dark of the complex, the moonlight was painfully bright. Tanner blinked his eyes clear. The Peugeot sat as they’d left it; beside it, the Mercedes. None of Litzman’s men were visible. Tanner was only marginally surprised. With only six to cover the complex, they’d decided to abandon the Mercedes and concentrate on making sure he and Cahil didn’t make it out alive.

  Hunched over, they ran to the Peugeot. All four of its tires had been slashed. They moved to the Mercedes. Unsurprisingly, the doors were locked. “Hotwire it?” Cahil whispered.

  “We wouldn’t get ten feet,” Tanner replied. Litzman’s men were traveling in style; they’d chosen a brand-new E-class. “Use anything but the ignition key and the fuel system shuts down.”

  “Lovely. I don’t like our chances in an ambush.”

  “Me neither.” They’d already pushed their luck to the edge. With only one weapon between the two of them, an ambush wasn’t worth the risk. Coming out alive was triumph enough. “I say we retreat.”

  Bear said, “Then we’re on foot.”

  Tanner smiled. “And so are they.”

  He took out his knife, jammed the blade into the rear tire, then the front, then tossed the knife to Cahil who did the same on the other side.

  As the air hissed from the Mercedes’s tires, Tanner glanced around, trying to get his bearings. They had to be near Saint Servant, not more than five miles. He picked out a stand of trees he assumed was in the right direction and they started jogging.

  17

  Erbs Mill, Pennsylvania

  Oliver, McBride, and Scanlon’s HRT maintained their vigil throughout the night, watching the shack’s interior through the night-vision scopes and listening to the remote microphone they’d slipped between a pair of warped planks in the rear wall.

  Both Selmani and Mrs. Root had dozed fitfully, she curled in a ball, he leaned against the wall, instantly awake at her every movement or sound. Scanlon’s snipers were unable to get a better angle on Selmani himself, so all they could tell of the wire around Ms. Root’s neck was that it seemed to lead to the area of Selmani’s left hand.

  At four A.M., a cell phone rang inside the cabin. Selmani fished the phone from his pocket, listened for a few moments, then replied in what McBride and the others assumed was Albanian. Selmani’s tone was plaintive, his cadence hurried. McBride knew the linguists at Quantico would give them a translation of the conversation, but it was clear Selmani was agitated. About what? McBride wondered

  “If I had to guess,” Oliver said, “he’s not happy about being out here alone. We know there were at least six of them involved—where the hell are the others? What are they waiting for?”

  Thirty minutes before dawn Scanlon ordered his team back to the inlet, where everyone waded to the opposite shore and trudged back through the forest to the road.

  The daytime plan was to be one of containment. Scan-Ion’s men would stand rotating shifts in blinds along the inlet’s bank and in the swamp to its north, while FBI agents from the Pittsburgh Field Office and Lancaster County sheriff’s deputies would reprise their roles as local fishermen and spend the day cruising the Susquehanna River between Reed Island and House Rock Creek.

  If Selmani tried to move, they would be ready to take him. If he stayed put, Oliver and McBride had until nightfall to decide how to best rescue Mrs. Root. Whatever the plan, McBride assumed FBI headquarters would push for action before another day passed.

  As Scanlon arranged to have the surveillance tapes hurried to Quantico, Oliver and McBride drove back into Erbs Mill in Chief Nester’s cruiser, stopped briefly at the station so Nester could check in with his secretary, then drove to his house, a modest ranch perched on the banks of Tuequan Creek. Nester was divorced and lived alone except for a five-year-old basset hound named Betty.

  He showed Oliver and McBride where the shower was, then laid out a breakfast of bacon, eggs, sausage links, hash browns, toast with fresh butter, and strong black coffee. After three helpings McBride pushed his plate away and groaned. “Thanks, Jerry, that was great. I can feel my arteries hardening.”

  “Harder for the mosquitos to draw blood that way.”

  McBride glanced at his watch. “Collin, how long for Quantico, you think?”

  “We should hear something by noon, I hope. Till then, let’s get some sleep.”

  “I’ve got couches in the basement,” Nester said. “Come on.”

  “I’ll be down in a few minutes,” McBride said. “I’ve got a call to make.”

  “Root?” asked Oliver.

  McBride nodded. “It’s time he got some good news for a change.”

  McBride awoke to the sound of a cell phone trilling. He rolled over and glanced at his watch: 11:00 A.M. Sunlight streamed through the blinds covering the basement windows. On the other side of the room Oliver lay propped up on one elbow, his ear pressed to the phone. “Okay, thanks. I’ll call you when we’re there.”

  “Something?” McBride asked.

  “Maybe. They saw something on the video. We need a computer.” Just then, Nester came down the stairs. Oliver said, “Jerry, I need a computer, something with a fast internet connection.”

  Nester grinned. “Boy, jeez, computers … I’ve heard of ’em—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Smart ass.”

  Nester laughed. “We’ve got a two-gig Dell down at the station with a DSL connection.”

  “Wow. What do you use that for?”

  “Oh, you know, hick stuff. Goat porn.”

  “Jesus, Jerry.”

  McBride asked Oliver, “What else, Collin?”

  “They’re still working on tracking the call Selmani got, but Linguistics finished the translation. They’ll beam us the transcript. One interesting thing: Either Selmani’s a polyglot or he isn’t Albanian.”

  “What?”

  “The language he was speaking—it wasn’t Albanian. It was fluent Bosnian.”

  Twenty minutes later they were at the police station. With Nester and McBride looking over his shoulder, Oliver sat down, typed the FBI website’s URL into the browser and hit enter. On the home page he clicked the link for “Laboratory Services” and entered his password.

  He flipped open his cell phone and speed-dialed a number. “It’s Oliver; I’m there. Which file?” He listened for a moment, then hung up. He turned to Nester. “This thing have a microphone?”

  “Yeah, a built-in. It’s in the control panel.”

  Oliver clicked into the Dell’s control panel and activated the microphone. Next he called up the website’s directory, threaded his way into a subset, then clicked on a file labeled SUSQEHANNAI. The screen went to black except for a line of PLAY/PAUSE/STOP icons along
the bottom. In the upper right corner a small loudspeaker icon appeared, indicating a voice macro was running.

  “Agent Oliver, are you there?” the Quantico technician said.

  “I’m here.”

  “Okay, here’s what we found: You had a lot of video to cover, so we pulled in another duty shift and divided it up between us.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “No problem. We got our break at about one-nineteen in the morning. I believe it’s when you had the sniper zoom in on Mrs. Root. I’m putting it on your screen now.”

  After a moment, the blackness on the monitor dissolved into the familiar green-white image of the cabin’s window, through which Selmani and Mrs. Root could be seen in their usual positions. The video counter read 01:18:06 A.M.

  “We had to invert the colors and wash them out,” said the technician. “But I think you’ll be able to see it. I’ll slow it down when the camera starts zooming in.”

  As advertised, the screen turned to a black-and-white negative image; the images of Selmani and Mrs. Root were ghost-like, hazy. They reminded McBride of those new-agey aura photos he’d seen on some occult show on the Discovery Channel.

  The counter clicked to 01:19:01. The camera began zooming in, focusing on Mrs. Root’s ankle and the crescent-shaped scar there. After a moment it began panning upward to her head, where it paused again. The wire around her neck was clear now, a black band across her throat. Now the video slowed again, moving jerkily, frame-by-frame as it panned across the black hood covering her face.

  The video froze.

  “There,” the technician said. “Over her shoulder … where the wall meets the floor. See it?”

  Oliver and the others leaned toward the screen, squinting.

  The technician said, “The black stripe that runs along the baseboard …”

  “I see it,” said McBride.

  “Okay, now keep your eyes on it.”

  The video began moving again, pausing at each frame as the camera swept toward Selmani. As McBride watched, the black stripe along the floorboard diverged from the wall, then joined the wire leading to Mrs. Root’s neck before finally disappearing around Selmani’s knee.

  Oliver was the first one to understand what he was seeing. “Oh, God. It’s under the floor.”

  The technician said, “We worked with the scale and shading then had an explosive guy come over and take a look. He’s pretty sure it’s electrical det cord. Collin, your guy’s got that shack wired to blow.”

  18

  Saint Servant, France

  Tanner and Cahil jogged cross-country, sticking close to tree lines and winding their way through the creek bottoms until they reached the outskirts of Saint Servant. It was nearly two A.M., and the little town was dark and quiet.

  They found a park, chose a picnic table near the center pavilion, and sat down. They pulled out their cell phones, conferenced them together, and dialed. Oaken answered on the first ring. “Where are you?”

  Tanner recounted their movements since leaving Plancoet.

  “Well, you’ve made headlines. After you left St. Malo, I started monitoring the news over there. About an hour ago sketches of both of you began popping up on TV. Witnesses claim to have seen you leaving the hotel after Gunston’s murder.”

  Makes sense, Tanner thought. Realizing he and Cahil had escaped the Ghost Line, Litzman’s men had gone to plan B: Let the French authorities do the hunting for them. The witness statements were of course a sham; no one had seen them leaving the hotel, of that Tanner was certain. He wondered how long it would be before the police would be tipped to their presence in the Saint Servant area.

  “How good are the sketches?” Tanner asked.

  “Yours is pretty good; Bear’s not so much. They’ve got him slimmer, with darker hair.”

  Cahil said, “I’m flattered.”

  “I thought you might be,” Oaken said. “You’re headed to Lorient?”

  “Yes,” Tanner said. “Gunston’s meeting was with her tonight.”

  “Okay, on the chance you’ll have to stay in-country, I’ll work on getting you clean passports. You’ll have to do something about your appearance. Anything else I can do?”

  “I pulled a cell phone off one of the Germans. I’m hoping you can track a number.”

  “Whose?”

  “Litzman. He was listed in the speed dial under the Bolz alias.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No.” Such was the double edge of technology, Tanner knew. Even those who knew better often overused such conveniences, recording information into their PDAs, telephones, and computers that’s best kept only in memory. The German had not only ignored good tradecraft, but he’d assumed no one knew about Litzman’s alias. “I put it back the way I found it; with luck they won’t toss the phones.”

  “I’ll get on it,” Oaken said. “What kind of phone and what company?”

  Tanner told him, then said, “Do what you can.”

  Aside from the obvious benefit of knowing who and where Litzman had been calling, Briggs was hoping to make Susanna’s continued participation unnecessary. He’d like nothing better than to put her on the first plane back to Gillman Vetsch.

  Since learning of Litzman’s involvement, a knot had been building in Tanner’s chest, and he knew what it was: rage. Litzman had lured a company of Marines into an ambush then slaughtered it; months later, he did the same to Tanner and his team in Bishkek. And now he had Susanna—doing God knew what to her … using her for—

  Briggs stopped himself. Don’t, he commanded. Litzman was too dangerous, too ruthless, to pursue without a clear head. In his mind, Tanner opened a box, stuffed all his worry and anger into it, then shut the lid. Get to Lorient; find Susanna, then find Litzman and put a stop to him.

  Oaken asked, “What’s your plan?”

  “Renting a car is too risky; same with hitchhiking,” Tanner said. “On the way here I saw a sign for a quarry. A few months ago I thought I read something about Saint Servant and Lorient … a waterfront project?”

  “Hold on, I’ll do a Google search.” Tanner could hear the tapping of keyboard keys. After thirty seconds, Oaken said, “Yep. They just broke ground on a new airport. The first phase is backfilling some marshland.”

  “Which means gravel,” Cahil said.

  “Which means a quarry,” Oaken added, then tapped more keys. “Yep … good memory, Briggs. Looks like the Saint Servant quarry is the main supplier for the project.”

  “The joys of trivia,” Briggs replied. “Oaks, you work on Litzman’s phone. Bear and I have a date with a dump truck.”

  The quarry was only two kilometers outside town but, wary of running into Litzman’s men, who could have easily guessed Saint Servant was their destination, they took it slowly. They arrived at the quarry shortly before dawn.

  The crews were already at work. The pit, which measured almost a mile in length and half that in width, was ringed with spiral roads—one for trucks descending, another for trucks departing with loads. Mounted on scaffolding at the quarry’s edge, stadium lights bathed the pit in bright white light. The air was thick with gravel dust and the stench of diesel fumes. In the pit, backhoes scooped up loads of gravel and dirt then dropped them into mechanical separators which in turn dumped them into waiting trucks, which then began grinding their way up the spiral road.

  Lying at the pit’s edge, Tanner and Cahil watched for a few minutes before settling on a plan. Tanner pointed to the outlet road and a line of trees that bordered it. “See any guards?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Let’s go catch our ride.”

  It took fifteen minutes to make their way to the opposite side. Crouched in the trees they watched truck after truck grind up the grade, turn onto the service road, and head toward the highway. To the east, the upper rim of the sun was peeking over the horizon.

  At the right moment, they sprinted from cover and
leapt onto a truck’s bumper. Tanner scaled the ladder, rolled himself over the edge, then reached over to help Cahil up. Together they lay back in the gravel. “How far to Lorient?” Bear asked.

  “An hour at most.”

  The sun was fully up when the truck pulled into the backfill pit at the Lorient construction site. Tanner could smell the tang of saltwater in the air. In the distance he heard the cawing of sea gulls. Their ride had been uneventful save for a few tense minutes outside Hennebont when the truck stopped at a roadblock.

  Seeing flashing blue lights on the passing tree, Briggs crawled to the front of the bin and peeked over the edge to see a pair of gendarmie cruisers sitting astride the road, with a line of a dozen cars stretched back along the road. A trio of officers questioned each driver and inspected the vehicle’s interior before waving it on.

  Whether or not the roadblock was intended for them Tanner couldn’t know, but he wasn’t about to take a chance. Working quickly, he and Cahil buried themselves in the gravel, leaving exposed only their mouths surrounded by a crater of pebbles. With the weight of the gravel heavy on his chest, Briggs listened as the truck pulled up to the roadblock and stopped. He heard muffled voices speaking, followed by the clank of footsteps on the steel ladder. He took a breath, held it. After thirty long seconds, a voice called out, “Il est clair … aller, aller.” The truck’s gears engaged and they lurched forward again.

  Now Tanner felt the truck descending. With a hissing of air brakes, the truck slowed to a stop. Tanner glanced over the rear lip. On either side lay a dirt berm beyond which he could see trees backlit by the morning sun. The nearest truck was half a mile behind, but closing the gap quickly. They jumped down, sprinted across the road, and scrambled up the embankment. At the top, they hunched over and headed for the trees.

  Twenty minutes and three taxi switches later they checked into a motel in Caudan, one of Lorient’s suburbs. Tanner called Oaken and gave him an update; Dutcher got on the other line. “I can’t be sure about the roadblock,” Briggs said, “but no one gave us a second glance in town.”