Overture to Disaster (Post Cold War Political Thriller Trilogy Book 3)

by Chester D. Campbell

  Burke eased around the corner and accelerated as the cab pulled away.

  He picked up Yuri at the brightly lighted entrance and started in pursuit of the taillights ahead. He was familiar with the usual routes the cabbies took in this area. After a few turns, he figured this one was headed for the Fourteenth Street bridge that led across the Potomac into Virginia. However, before reaching the bridge, it turned southeast on Maine Avenue, went past the big seafood restaurants along the Washington Channel and east on M Street. It then entered a mixed area of houses and commercial buildings in the vicinity of the Navy Yard.

  Burke switched off his lights as he turned a corner and saw the cab slowing toward the end of the block. The taxi's interior light signaled that Stern was leaving. As Burke and Yuri watched, he crossed the street to a low building, the area behind it illuminated by floodlights on tall poles. After Stern disappeared from view, Burke drove on to the middle of the block and parked.

  "Let's have a look," he said, climbing out.

  The street itself was not well lighted. They stayed in the shadows as much as possible. As they got closer, they saw a sign out front that said "Advanced Security Systems." The building appeared to be a rectangular structure with a front entrance off the street. It occupied a corner lot. A high chain link fence with barbed wire on top extended out from each side, with a gate on the right, then angled off toward the rear, enclosing a large storage yard with sodium lights that bathed the area in a bright yellow glow. Lights were also on inside the building.

  "Let's check in back," Burke suggested as they reached the intersection.

  They crossed over, then walked down the far side to get a view of the fenced enclosure from the rear. It contained a few unmarked cars, some panel trucks and vans, and a variety of construction equipment including an air compressor, a concrete mixer, a front loader and a Bobcat.

  At the rumbling sound of an overhead door opening, Burke and Yuri stepped back beneath the protective shadow of a large tree. The door was located at the rear of a projecting wing of the building. It appeared to house a maintenance shop. A yellow dump truck sat just inside. Yuri's eyes widened at the sight. It was deja vu.

  Burke had brought along a Nikon with a telephoto lens and a roll of ultra-high-speed film. He snapped the view of the truck in the maintenance shop, then swung the camera around as three men walked out into the light of the yard. From his attire, it was immediately obvious that one was Adam Stern. Another was dressed in blue jeans and a yellow shirt with blue stripes, the same outfit they had seen when the gray Chevy van had stopped for lunch down in Virginia.

  "It's Nikolai Romashchuk," Yuri whispered.

  Burke, sighting through the camera lens, nodded. "Yeah, I recognize him and Stern. I've never seen the other one, though."

  Continuing to snap pictures as the trio walked over to a blue minivan, he noted the name "Capital Surveys" on a magnetic sign fixed to the door. Then Romashchuk climbed into the driver's seat.

  "We'd better get back to the truck," Burke whispered. "Looks like he may be ready to leave."

  They hurried back to the corner, crossed the street and made their way up to where the black truck was parked. They had just settled inside when a pair of headlights appeared at the gate in the Advanced Security Systems' fence. As the vehicle pulled into the street, it turned in their direction.

  "Get down," Burke warned, bending over in the seat.

  After the vehicle had passed, they looked back and saw it was the blue minivan. Observing no other lights at the gate, Burke started the truck, wheeled around and followed the taillights that were now turning into a side street up ahead.

  "Maybe he'll lead us to where they're staying," Burke said.

  When Romashchuk made a few more turns in quick succession, Burke decided either the Major was lost or, more likely, attempting to find out if he was being followed. But at that point Burke spotted headlights in the rearview mirror, making the same turns, and concluded there was one other possibility.

  "I think somebody's following us," he said, an edge to his voice. Recognizing the area, he realized the street led toward a dead-end at the Anacostia River.

  Romashchuk began to slow the van, but the headlights in back relentlessly bore down on them. "It could be a trap," Burke said. "Did you bring your Rossi?"

  "No. I am out of ammunition."

  "Damn. I don't have a weapon either."

  The blue minivan ahead turned sideways in the street and came to a stop. Burke slowed to a crawl but saw the vehicle behind closing rapidly. It was barely two hundred feet away. He wasn't sure just what kind of car it was, apparently a small, sporty Japanese model, but he was certain the driver would be Adam Stern. And without a gun, they were dead the moment they stepped out of the truck.

  Burke saw only one possible way out. He jammed the brake, screeching to a stop, flipped the transmission to reverse and stepped on the gas pedal.

  "Hang on Yuri!"

  The truck picked up speed as Burke steered backward toward the car. It promptly halted, but there was no way the driver could avoid the black hulk that smashed into its front end with an echoing thud, accompanied by the crunch and tinkle of broken glass. The truck's heavy steel bumper suffered no more than a modest dent. Burke shifted into drive, hit the gas again and spun the wheel to the left. The street was too narrow for a clean getaway, but a short burst in reverse allowed him to straighten out, then shoot forward. He wondered if he had damaged the transmission, but the truck never hesitated. They sped away before Stern, dazed by the crash, or Romashchuk, caught completely by surprise, could react.

  Adam Stern sat at the desk in the Advanced Security Systems office and rubbed his neck, which was still a bit sore where he banged his head into the roof of Haskell Feldhaus' red Nissan 240SX. The sporty vehicle now sat behind the building with its front-end bashed in.

  "Are you positive it was Hill?" Feldhaus asked.

  "I'm not positive of anything." Stern's voice was testy. He knew he had screwed up and he was damned unhappy about it. "It was too dark to be positive. The impression I got was that the face matched Hill's photo. My impressions are usually quite accurate. If there's a possibility Hill could be back here, I'd say it was him."

  He found the phone number for the Colorado resort and called Laurence Coyne. It was two hours earlier in the Mountain Time Zone and the FAR president wasn't in his room. He returned the call around midnight Washington time.

  "We have a problem," Stern said. "Hill may be back here."

  "How could that be possible? You said the FBI—"

  "I said they talked to him in San Francisco. But as far as I know, no one actually saw him get on the plane."

  "I thought the airline confirmed he used his ticket?"

  "They did. But I'm almost certain I saw him a couple of hours ago."

  He recounted the incident on the street near the Anacostia River. Coyne was clearly agitated. "If it was Hill, how did he know about Advanced Security Systems?"

  "Maybe the same way he knew to send Rodman and Shumakov to San Antonio. The man obviously has excellent sources. The big questions is, is Hill really in Seoul? If he is, we have a bigger problem. If he isn't, I'll deal with him my way."

  "Damn, Adam. You assured me you had everything under control."

  "I know. And I will. But right now I need you to get Nate Highsmith to call his Seoul office. I want to know definitely if Hill is over there."

  Thirty minutes later, Highsmith was on the phone with Jerry Chan. "I need to talk to Burke," he said in an urgent voice.

  "He isn't here, Mr. Highsmith."

  "Where is he?"

  "He called when he got here. Said he’d picked up some kind of virus, was sick at his stomach. Said he’d just stay in bed at the hotel until he got to feeling better."

  "You haven't seen him?"

  "No, sir. I haven't bothered him. I figured he needed the rest."

  "Call me when you hear from him," Nate instructed.

  Was Chan
being purposely evasive, he wondered? He knew Jerry and Burke had become close friends while they were setting up the Korean office and working on that Poksu operation. Would he lie to cover for Burke? There was also the possibility that Hill had called from the U.S. and pretended to be at the Korean hotel. There was one way to find out. He placed a call to the Chosun Hotel in Seoul.

  "This is Nathaniel Highsmith, president of Worldwide Communications Consultants in Washington. One of my employees, Mr. Burke Hill, had a reservation for arrival there yesterday. Would you see if he has checked in, please?"

  A few moments later, the desk clerk was back on the line. "No, sir, Mr. Highsmith. Mr. Hill has not yet arrived."

  66

  The seven-mile section of I-40 between Exits 340 and 347 was the most expensive stretch of highway in Tennessee. The initial millions spent on blasting the roadbed out of the side of Mount Roosevelt proved to be only the beginning. In later years, not once, but twice, sections of the highway had crumbled and slid down the mountainside toward the valley far below. Highway engineers had pondered long and hard over the solution. The most noticeable result of the restructuring process was a series of large patches of reinforcing stones placed between the eastbound and westbound lanes, which lay at different elevations

  The once-unruly highway seemed to have been tamed over the past few years, but Caleb Keck, a highway maintenance supervisor with the Tennessee DOT, always checked it out carefully after a bad storm, like the one on Saturday afternoon. He was up early on Monday, stopped for breakfast at the Cracker Barrel at Exit 347, carried an extra cup of strong black coffee out to the yellow plastic holder hooked to the driver-side door, then started his slow ascent heading west.

  The sun appeared just above the horizon behind him, seemingly resting on a hilltop, bathing the valley beyond Rockwood in its golden glow. The view was as magnificent as ever, but Keck, who was raised on a rocky farm north of Knoxville, ignored it. His present interest was strictly in roadways and the problems they presented. He drove at no more than thirty miles an hour, letting the tourists and the truckers whiz by on his left. By the time he reached the Airport Road exit, nothing had turned up to stir any concern. He pulled off the interstate and crossed above it to re-enter the eastbound lanes.

  Keck lowered the volume on his two-way radio and turned up the FM station to hear a Reba McEntire song. He loved Reba. As he sang along with the record, slightly off-key, he cruised down the mountain toward a familiar bend in the highway, a swinging outside curve that would take you straight to hell if you missed it. The valley soon began to unfold in the distance. Listening intently as Reba's voice faded away, he almost missed the crumpled stretch of guard rail.

  Caleb Keck swung onto the shoulder and braked to a halt. He backed slowly toward the curve. It was not a place you wanted to make a miscue in steering. He got out and looked over the mangled pieces of steel. He hadn't heard anything about a wreck up here, but this certainly didn't look like a bounce-and-go situation. Peering over the side, he could see broken trees and pieces of gray-colored metal.

  He got back into his car and radioed the dispatcher. "This is Keck. I'm on I-40 East at the curve just before mile 342. Has the Highway Patrol reported an accident here?"

  "Not that I'm aware of. What do you see?"

  "The guard rail's mangled. I can see signs somebody went over the side. Better notify the Troopers. And tell Ed to put in a work order to repair this rail."

  Adam Stern was up early that morning also. He hadn't slept well. His neck was still sore, but that was not the cause of his restlessness. The real problem was Burke Hill. It was a problem that required an immediate and final solution.

  He had clearly underestimated the man. Hill had cleverly pulled off that fake departure to Seoul, then compounded the crime by ramming Feldhaus' car with that damned truck. Stern had already checked out the black pickup's Tennessee license plate and found it was owned by a rental firm in Knoxville. A call to Tennessee established that it was rented Saturday evening by a man identified as Stephen Douglas. That cinched it. Nathaniel Highsmith confirmed that Douglas was the name Hill had used during his banishment to Alaska.

  Coyne and Whitehurst had now agreed that Stern should handle the problem. He looked up a number in his private directory and soon heard the familiar voice he had consulted about another matter in Falls Church the week before.

  "This is the Parson," he said, repeating the same routine. "I have a job for you that will pay double the last one."

  "Hey, Parson, lay it on me."

  "This one won't be as easy. You'll have to find the man first. He lives in Falls Church, but he's a slippery character."

  "I've got lots of friends in the looking business."

  "I know. That's why I picked you. But we don't have much time. It should be done today. By noon tomorrow at the latest."

  "Damn, you're an impatient man, Parson. Gimme the dude's pedigree. Everything you can."

  "His name is Burke Hill," Stern began. He told where Hill worked and lived, described his two kids, detailed his wife's business, explained about the fake trip out of Dulles and advised that he was probably hiding out somewhere in the area. "Watch your step. He's an ex-FBI agent and his wife is a former CIA officer."

  "Hey, that makes it more interesting. Got a picture?"

  "You can pick it up at the gun shop after nine." It was a drop-off point in Alexandria they had used previously. The envelope would bear the name "Max."

  Stern's request touched off a flurry of calls around the Washington area during the next two hours. Compiling Hill's dossier, as the more sophisticated might call it, was not overly difficult. Living in the world's most open society, populated primarily by candid, friendly, trusting people, Americans would readily divulge some of their innermost secrets to perfect strangers, if properly approached. Anyone with a credit card, a checking account, an automobile, a telephone, a direct mail purchase, to name a few, left an amazing trail of facts in computers across the country. All of it was available to those with the equipment, the know-how and the entree to the data bases. One of the calls Max placed was to an information wizard named Murray Bender. As usual, he had to leave his number on the answering machine.

  Washington, D.C. held a particular fascination for Americans of all ages, from the lowly to the illustrious. Despite the city's troubled recent past, its struggles with disaffected minorities, with drugs and crime, people across the country held it in a certain reverence. The sight of Old Glory snapping in the breeze above a magnificent gilded dome stirred a sense of patriotism in even the most hardened cynic. On Monday, July third, eve of the holiday that annually rekindled the nation's pride in its freedom and independence, tourists by the thousands invaded the capital's historic areas, armed to the teeth with photographic gear of every description. They poked and pointed and peered through an astonishing variety of lenses at the venerable sights so familiar to patriots from Maine to California.

  As the morning rush hour ended and workers who hadn't managed an extra day off began business as usual, a different kind of lens was aimed along Maryland Avenue near Sixth Street, a couple of blocks removed from the throngs of camera-toting visitors. What appeared to be a surveyor's transit was set up in the street behind the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Building, just in front of a blue minivan with the markings of "Capitol Surveys" on the side. Actually the transit-looking device was called an aiming circle elbow telescope, a piece of military hardware used for the orientation of indirect fire weapons. The "surveyor" was Nikolai Romashchuk, his assistant the Peruvian called Pepe.

  It took less than thirty minutes for the Major to complete his work, which included spray-painting two green X's on the pavement where the telescope sat. Then he drove back to Advanced Security Systems, where a sign posted on the front door gave notice that the company was "Closed for Holidays." The employees had been given a long weekend off. It was not that Haskell Feldhaus was all that generous. The closure had been planned to give
Romashchuk and his crew the opportunity to work unobserved and unhindered. A small group of employees with special talents had been instructed to stand by at home for a possible special assignment.

  Besides the English requirement, the Major had requested that El Sendero Luminoso provide him with two men who were experienced drivers and one a qualified welder. Now he supervised the South American welder in securing three model 1937 Soviet 82mm mortars to the bed of the yellow dump truck. Using the information he had obtained at the Maryland Avenue site, which lay exactly 800 meters from the target, the Major positioned the bipod assemblies and baseplates to allow for the precise setting of azimuth and elevation on the weapons. They would be leveled when in place by reducing or increasing air pressure in the truck tires. He had firing tables that gave the proper propellant charge for the desired trajectory.

  Romashchuk was familiar with IRA mortar attacks on British installations in Northern Ireland. They had used crude homemade devices with little reliability, strictly hit or miss, mostly miss. He was satisfied that his arrangement would produce direct hits. It was the real thing. Real Soviet mortars and production line shells, each round filled with five kilograms of a highly lethal nerve agent. He had been assured that only enough to cover the head of a pin was required to kill a person. When the shells exploded on impact, the nerve agent would be dispersed in a fine mist that would spread quickly with no more than a gentle breeze. Members of his team always used gloves to handle the weapons, but he carried syringes of atropine, a nerve gas antidote, in case of accidental exposure.

  After lunch he went to work on the blue minivan, which also required some modest modification. First he removed the Capital Surveys sign. He cut a hole through the floor about three feet from the rear, then attached a large pipe resembling an oversize tailpipe alongside the exhaust. He extended it up through the opening in the floor with a ninety-degree fitting. Using a similar fitting, he curved it toward the front, where he attached a section of plastic outlet tube from a gas-powered blower, the kind used in suburbia to clean leaves from patios and driveways. Before inserting the other section of outlet tube, which was bolted to the blower itself, he installed an attachment with a large plastic canister that would permit blowing of solid material such as insulation.