The Fourth Horseman

by David Hagberg

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t think we can use the satellite any time soon. They’ll be revamping the malware system, and until I can get the bypass codes we’re out of luck.”

  “Will they trace it back to Louise?” Pete asked.

  Otto grinned. “No,” he said, at the same time his wife did.

  He picked up the GPS signal from McGarvey’s phone, then called.

  “I’m about thirty miles out,” McGarvey said. “Is he in Dover?”

  “In the Dover Mall just north of the base. We’re waiting for him to come out.”

  “There’s no reason for him to stop at a mall, except to ditch the Camry. He either walked away, or someone picked him up.”

  “How about a cab?” Pete asked.

  “That’s possible. It means he knows or suspects that we’re watching him, and he considered the likelihood probably from the beginning. He’s on his way now to pick up another car.”

  “You think he’ll try to get on the base?” Pete asked.

  “Guaranteed,” McGarvey said. “Call the commander and get me a pass.”

  “We still have time to get a NEST team up there,” Otto said. “It’s worth a try.”

  “If he so much as gets a hint that those people have shown up he’ll pull the trigger.”

  “Maybe he will anyway,” Pete said.

  “He’s got bigger targets in mind. Somehow he managed to get the three weapons shipped over, and they’re sitting in a warehouse or empty hangar somewhere on base waiting for him to pick them up. And from there he’ll take them probably to Washington and New York.”

  “They’re sending back lots of military equipment out of Lahore now that most of the operations in Afghanistan have been shut down,” Pete said. “Rajput was helping him so it would have been fairly simple to slip three packages through. Shielded crates, maybe, even hidden in boxes of aircraft parts. Anything.”

  “Medical waste,” Otto suggested. “Could be marked biohazard. I have a feeling that Dover doesn’t have the facilities to dispose of something like that, so it’d have to be shipped to a safe site somewhere.”

  “Find out as much as you can,” McGarvey said. “It’s a good bet he’s going to get on base with the proper credentials and paperwork to pick up whatever they’re packaged in. And at this point I’d guess biohazardous material would be the most likely. The packages would be sealed, and no one would be tempted to open them.”

  “We’re on it,” Otto said.

  “I’ll be at the main gate in less than thirty minutes.”

  * * *

  Haaris paid off the cabby and went inside the casino, where he ditched the hat in a trash can. He had a cup of coffee in one of the snack bars, then bought an oversized dark blue sweatshirt printed with a pair of dice with a five and two showing, the casino’s name below them.

  He left the jacket in the men’s room, pulled on the sweatshirt and went back outside, where he caught another cab, giving the driver a residential address on the west side of town just off Forrest Avenue.

  Just before he got in the backseat, he looked to the southeast toward the base as a C-5M Super Galaxy troop transport made its approach into the pattern. NEST teams did not ride around in aircraft like that, but he was still worried that something was coming up on his six. McGarvey.

  Ten minutes later the cabby pulled up in front of a ranch-style house with a two-car garage in a quiet middle-class neighborhood. It was a weekday, so husbands were at work and wives were either home doing housework or off shopping with friends, whatever housewives did during the week. He’d never wondered about Deborah’s schedule while he was away. But then, he’d never really given a damn about her.

  The last time he’d been up here for a long weekend he’d taken the ten-year-old Chevy Tahoe out of the garage and washed it in the driveway. One of the neighbors came over to say hi, and they’d chatted about absolutely nothing for ten minutes until the poor bastard had wandered off.

  Haaris came across as an okay neighbor who kept his place neat but was standoffish and hardly ever home. No wife, no kids or pets, probably a salesman on the road most of the time. He’d owned the house for three years and most of the time he arrived by cab, just like today. Nothing unusual. Ted Johnson is home again. Blend with the woodwork. Show them what they want to see. Just like the Messiah had.

  Inside he made a quick inspection of every room, all the doors and windows, to make sure no one had been inside or had tried to get in since the last time he was here. There was dust on everything; no one had been here.

  He changed into a long-sleeved white shirt and opened the garage door. The Tahoe started with no trouble, and he pulled out, closed the garage door for the last time and drove directly back to Forrest Avenue, traffic almost nonexistent compared to that in DC. Past the AAA offices, Forrest turned into State Road 8, and six miles out of town he came to what had once been a metal fabrication company behind a tall wire-mesh fence, but was now long since deserted.

  He’d bought it through a shell company two years ago and had come out only once in person, at night. The one-story office building was set just off the road, behind it two fabrication buildings and a warehouse and parts inventory facility. The driveways were cracked, weeds growing everywhere.

  Unlocking the gate, he drove back to the warehouse, unlocked the big steel doors and drove inside, parking next to a white Lincoln hearse fitted out to transport two full-sized coffins. He pulled the silk cover off the hearse. The tastefully small logo on the driver’s and passengers’ doors read: THOMAS FUNERAL HOME, WILMINGTON, DE.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  McGarvey pulled up at the Dover Air Force Base main gate a few minutes before one and presented his ID to one of the air policemen. “General Taff is expecting me.”

  “Yes, sir,” the airman said. He wrote something on a clipboard. “If you’ll park in the visitors’ lot your escort will be here momentarily.”

  About fifty yards back was a small parking lot and visitors’ center. McGarvey drove over and parked at the same moment Otto phoned.

  “Two Bureau guys were here looking for you. Marty told them that you definitely were not on Campus and probably not in the city. I’ll have Page call the White House and cancel the warrant.”

  “Don’t do it. If Haaris thinks that I may be arrested at any moment, he might let down his guard.”

  “They’ll try to search your apartment, if they haven’t already tried. Are they going to run into any surprises?”

  “Nothing dangerous, but they’ll need a damned good locksmith to get in. Any trace of Dave?”

  “We’re blind for now, but I put three of Stuart’s people on ex-comms checking every hotel and motel in town, plus the casino and security at the Dover Mall for anything unusual.” Stuart Middler was chief of CIA internal security, and the ex-comms was an extended communications check to places that Haaris might have shown up. “They haven’t come up with anything yet.”

  “Where’s the nearest decent-sized civilian airport?”

  “Wilmington, about forty miles north.”

  “Does he have a pilot’s license?”

  “I’ll find out.”

  “Extend the ex-comms to the airport; see if anyone has reserved an airplane to deliver something. Maybe automobile parts, something fairly heavy. I’m guessing a twin-engine Cessna or better.”

  A plain blue Chevy Impala with air force markings came through the gate and pulled up as McGarvey got out of Louise’s car. A master sergeant whose nametag read, LARSEN, introduced himself.

  “I’ll take you to General Taff, Mr. Director. He’s expecting you.”

  The sergeant drove directly over to base headquarters. In the distance, on the far side of the main runway, the Super Galaxy was parked on the tarmac in front of a large building at the end of a row of several equally large hangars.

  “What’s over there?” McGarvey asked.

  “The Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs. Where all the bodies are brought for preparation before t
heir release to families.”

  “Civilians?”

  “Some.”

  * * *

  Brigadier General Herman Taff was a slender man with ordinary features who could have passed for the CEO of a medium-sized business just about anywhere. When McGarvey was shown in he got up, shook hands and motioned to a chair across the desk from him. He was slightly annoyed.

  “It’s been a busy day so far, Mr. Director, so I assume you’re going to explain why you came to visit us.”

  “We don’t have a lot of time, General, so I’ll be brief. You have trouble coming your way, and it’ll probably be here within the next half hour or less. We think that as many as three nuclear devices may have been sent to this base from Pakistan, possibly disguised as medical waste, a biohazard of some sort in sealed containers that would likely not be opened by your personnel.”

  “Nuclear weapons,” Taff said. “From Pakistan.”

  “Someone will be coming here to pick them up. If it is medical waste, what would you do with it?”

  “Depending on the hazard level, it would be sent out by air to Nellis in Nevada.”

  “What if it were too dangerous to be put aboard an airplane?”

  “If it were too risky it would go by truck or unmarked van,” Taff said. “We had an incident three months ago involving medical waste from a pair of Ebola victims in Africa. Someone from the CDC came to pick it up.”

  “If someone shows up with the proper paperwork, do you release whatever it is they’ve come to pick up without checking with someone? Say, at the CDC?”

  “No need if they have the proper orders, and they’re on our roster.”

  “I’d like to see that roster,” McGarvey said. Haaris had made his first serious mistake.

  “That’s not going to be possible. I’m sorry, sir, but I’m going to need more than your word.”

  “Have your secretary telephone Walt Page, he’s the director of the CIA. But do it now.”

  Taff hesitated for a moment but picked up the phone and instructed his secretary to make the call.

  “What about civilian bodies?”

  “We get them from time to time.”

  “Who picks them up?”

  “A funeral home sends a hearse.”

  McGarvey pulled out his cell phone and called Otto. “They might be in coffins,” he said. “Haaris will be showing up with a hearse to pick them up.”

  Taff was alarmed.

  “Would the bodies be processed here?” McGarvey asked the general. “Would the coffins be opened?”

  “Not if the families requested closed-coffin funerals. We respect their wishes. In any event that sort of processing, identification and perhaps autopsies, would most likely be done before the bodies were shipped to us.”

  Taff brought up something on his computer.

  Otto was back. “Robert Brewster, Thomas Funeral Home, Wilmington, chartered a DeHavilland Beaver in the land version for a flight to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. It’s the only plane like that they had. Cargo is listed as two coffins.”

  “Only two?”

  “Yes. And Haaris is a commercial-rated pilot.”

  “One’s missing,” McGarvey said. “Find it.”

  “Where do I start?”

  “England.”

  Taff’s phone buzzed; he answered it and looked at McGarvey. “Get them up here; we’ll wait.”

  “Hang on,” McGarvey told Otto.

  “There’s a federal warrant for your arrest, Mr. McGarvey. We were told to hold you here until someone from the Bureau shows up.”

  “Call Page,” McGarvey told Otto. “It’s time to call the Bureau off. If they come anywhere near this place, and Haaris spots them, he’ll pull the trigger.”

  “I’m on it,” Otto said.

  “Someone from the Thomas Funeral Home with the right documents will be showing up here to pick up the bodies of two civilians,” McGarvey told Taff. “Only, the coffins won’t have bodies, they’ll each have a Pakistani nuclear device. Probably something in the ten-kiloton range. Actually, warheads for tactical missiles. This guy is well motivated, he knows what he’s doing and the cell phone he’s got with him is almost certainly programmed to detonate both weapons. He doesn’t want to do that here. He means to take one of them to New York City and the other down to Washington. He’s chartered a private plane from Wilmington and he‘s filed a flight plan to fly first to New Jersey.”

  The general suddenly didn’t look so sure of himself. He glanced at his computer screen. “A hearse from Wilmington, just the driver, is waiting at the main gate for his escort. We’ll delay him there until I can get some help.”

  “You can’t do that,” McGarvey said, jumping up.

  “We’ll take care of it,” Taff said.

  Two armed air policemen showed up.

  “Keep Mr. McGarvey here; the FBI has sent people to pick him up.”

  SEVENTY-TWO

  “An escort is being rounded up for you now, sir,” the air policeman at the main gate told Haaris. “If you’ll just go back to the parking area and wait there, shouldn’t be but a couple of minutes.”

  “Okay,” Haaris said. He made a U-turn and went to the parking lot.

  In the distance he could just make out the hangars, the Super Galaxy and the Carson Center, where his two coffins were waiting to be picked up. Something was wrong; he could feel it in his bones.

  He glanced over at a Toyota SUV and it was vaguely familiar to him. He’d seen the boxy vehicle somewhere before, but he couldn’t place the where or the when. But there had to be hundreds of SUVs just like it between here and DC.

  He stared at it for a long time, the uneasy feeling growing.

  Taking out his cell phone, he slid the battery cover off, removed the battery and got the SIM card from the jacket pocket of the dark blue suit he’d dressed in at the warehouse.

  * * *

  McGarvey’s cell phone rang. “May I answer it?”

  The general nodded.

  It was Otto. McGarvey put it on speaker. “The Bureau has agreed to drag its feet for now. But they’re not giving us much time before they want you to talk to them.”

  “What about the Secret Service?”

  “They turned it over to the Bureau first thing.”

  “Haaris is already here, they’re holding him at the main gate. In the meantime the general has placed me under arrest.”

  “Hold on, I’ll have Altman call him.… Shit, shit. Mac, Haaris’s phone just went active.”

  “Can you block his outgoing calls?”

  “I can try to shut him down, but he’s using one of our phones—one of the phones I modified for field officers—and he’d know the moment I tried something like that. You have to get to him and right now.”

  “Admiral Altman?” Taff asked. He was impressed.

  “Yes. But it’s your call now, General. The hearse driver has just activated his cell phone. All he has to do is pull up a number and hit speed dial. We might have just an instant to see the flash when both nuclear devices ignite, but it’ll be over with.”

  “He won’t commit suicide.”

  “They’ve been doing it in the Middle East for years, and the guys who took over the planes on nine-eleven were willing to die for their cause. Are you?”

  The general was deflated. “Can you stop him?”

  His secretary buzzed him. “Admiral Altman is calling for you, sir.”

  “I’d like to try.”

  “What do you need?”

  “A ride over to wherever he’s supposed to pick up the two coffins. No sirens. And in two minutes let him through the gate.”

  Taff hesitated only an instant longer, but then he nodded. “Do it,” he told the two air policemen, and then picked up the telephone.

  * * *

  Haaris pulled up the number that would detonate the two bombs here and the one in England. For the longest time, what seemed almost like an eternity to him, he stared at the SUV. From Lahore to here had
been a terribly long journey. Along the way there had been some good times, he’d never denied that to himself. Even with Deborah there had been the odd moment, when glancing at her he could see the obvious love for him in her eyes, and it gave him a little thrill of pleasure that somebody actually gave a damn. Unconditionally.

  He would have liked to finish his work. Deliver one bomb to his people at the mosque in New Jersey, who would in two days take it to the new World Trade Center. The second to his people in Alexandria, who would at the same moment as the New Jersey driver take it to the fence in front of the White House. The two days would give him the time to reach the funeral home in Farnborough, where he would pick up the coffin and deliver it to Ten Downing Street.

  Then he would press the button.

  Revenge would finally be his. But sitting here at the wheel of the hearse, the cell phone in his right hand, his thumb over the speed dial button, he tried to visualize exactly what it was that he was taking revenge for.

  At that moment a blue sedan with air force markings came through the main gate, and he shut the phone off and put it in his pocket as he powered down the window.

  * * *

  The two air policemen drove McGarvey directly across to the Carson Center’s incoming and processing facility, where bodies were brought in and made ready either for transportation to Arlington National Cemetery or for pickup by families.

  The cops parked their pickup truck around the corner of the building, out of sight of anyone coming from the main gate, and hurried back with McGarvey to the loading bay area, where the coffins would be brought out on trolleys

  A technical sergeant named Oakley came out. He looked a little green. No one else was around.

  “The captain called, said we’ve got some kind of trouble coming our way?”

  “Someone from a funeral home in Wilmington is coming to pick up a couple of coffins,” McGarvey said. “Where are they?”

  “Just inside. Said this guy was armed; what the hell is going on?”

  “The coffins might be wired with Semtex, set to blow up at any moment. So get your ass out of here now.”