Both Warner and Lopez had developed a nasty habit of appearing at the most vital moments and throwing spanners in the works of Mitchell’s missions, and he was growing tired of hearing their names. Freelancers, and bail–bondsmen at that, were harder both to control and to predict than paid employees of the government or armed forces.
Defense Intelligence Agency operative Douglas Jarvis had played a clever hand, keeping his own agents at arms–length and off the radar of the government, but that hand was now–defunct. Mitchell looked out of the windows at the glowing lights of the Las Vegas strip and cleared his mind of thought as he focused in on Mary Meyer and her single–minded mission to devastate the entire United States economy in a single, crushing blow. If Mitchell were in her shoes, where would he go and what would he do to complete his task before he was found and silenced?
Aaron’s eyes focused on the bright shimmering lights of the strip, and in an instant he knew that Mary intended to somehow subvert the power supply to the strip itself, and to do that she would need access to at least one of the main power stations serving the Las Vegas area.
A moment’s work brought up a series of power stations connected to the Nevada grid, and Mitchell knew that he would not have time to search them all in order to root out a single individual. More to the point, it would not be possible for Mary to hijack such vast industrialised sites in order to plug–in a fusion cage. In addition, how would Mary publicise the event? Nobody would know, and she had just one night in which to complete her task on her own...
Aaron thought of the commune that Stanley Meyer had hidden in, and in an instant he realized what Mary would most likely have done.
He reached for his cell phone, speed dialled a number and waited for the line to hook up.
‘What is it?’
‘I need every single resource we have in Nevada within the hour,’ Aaron snarled. ‘She’s not here on her own, she’s bought an army with her.’
***
XXXVII
‘We don’t have any record of those individuals passing through the airbase at this time ma’am.’
Special Agent Hannah Ford leaned against the security gates at Nellis Air Force Base and flashed her most winning smile at the soldier manning the gate house, let him catch a glimpse of her cleavage.
‘We know that a C–5A Galaxy aircraft departed Shepherd Field Air National Guard Base four hours ago and landed here,’ she said. ‘We also know that two fugitives with support from at least one government department of the intelligence services made it aboard that aircraft. All I want to know is where they went after that, or in what vehicle they were travelling.’
The soldier remained impassive.
‘I don’t know what to tell you ma’am,’ he replied. ‘I have no record of them passing through this airbase, and no amount of eyelash fluttering is gonna change that.’
Hannah’s winning smile evaporated and she pushed off the gate. ‘You know that hiding fugitives is a federal offence?’
The soldier shrugged. ‘Yes ma’am, but knowing nothing about it isn’t. You have a nice day.’
Hannah turned and stormed away from the gates of the airbase back to the pool car where Mickey was waiting for her. She yanked open the door and slumped into the passenger seat.
‘Never heard of them?’ Mickey hazarded.
Hannah scowled but said nothing as she covered her face with her hands, took a deep breath and then pushed her hair up and away from her face.
‘Warner and Lopez get out of that car somewhere near Richmond, and then we lose track of them. All we do have is the license plate of the vehicle they were seen arriving in, which was hired and later found abandoned outside a civilian airfield, and the occupants seen entering that field. The only aircraft that left that field in that time frame is a C–5A for Nellis, from where they’ve disappeared. Damn it, none of this makes any sense. Warner and Lopez arrived at the hotel in a vehicle! Why the hell did they steal another one?’
Mickey shook his head.
‘We’re chasing our tails here, Hannah. In my time at Quantico we were trained to track killers, to monitor suspected terrorists, to assist local law enforcement. Nothing I’m seeing here bears any reference to that. As far as I can make out, we’re chasing a bunch of lunatics across the country and have no idea, for sure, if they’re even criminals.’
‘Defense Intelligence Agency,’ Hannah said. ‘That’s what officer Morton said they’d claimed to be working for, right?’
‘They claimed to be working for, being the operative statement. Hannah, these people are likely con artists, frauds. Nothing they’ve said can be taken at face value.’
Hannah leafed through a folder that contained everything they had on the current case, and found herself once again looking at an image of Mary Meyer.
‘Why is nobody looking for this woman?’ Amber asked. ‘Her husband is now dead and she’s been missing for just as long, as has their daughter, Amber, who also showed up at the hotel with Warner and Lopez in tow.’
‘I don’t know,’ Mickey replied wearily. ‘They could be in Europe by now. This is a waste of time, Hannah. You’re just chasing this because you think that any success you have will piss Jenkins off.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Why are we here then?’
Hannah looked at Mickey for a moment, and then shrugged. ‘Because it might piss Jenkins off a little, obviously.’
Mickey sighed at the sight of the tiny smile touching Hannah’s freckled face. ‘I don’t know why I follow you into things like this.’
‘Because you know it stinks,’ Hannah replied, ‘just like I do. They’re all here, and they’re up to something. Whatever it is, I can’t just let it go – there’s also a homicide to think about, remember?’
‘Again, according to Ethan Warner, who then takes off before we can question him about how he knew there was a second person on the scene.’
‘The DNA profile will take a while to figure out, but we know the blood wasn’t Stanley Meyer’s. Warner was right, so why would he then take off, and why the hell is he being held up as a suspect in the case? He wasn’t there, can’t have been.’
‘And yet he knew somebody else was present at the scene,’ Mickey pointed out. ‘So he must be connected to the murder somehow.’
Hannah rubbed her temples wearily, her back still aching from the commercial flight that they had taken in order to pursue her wild hunch that they had all been missing something important that would tie all of the disparate threads together. Warner. Lopez. The Meyers, and the unknown killer she felt sure was …
Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket and she answered instantly.
‘Tell me you’ve got something.’
‘I’ve got something.’
The excitement in Special Agent Emma Granger’s voice made Hannah sit up straight in her seat and switch the phone onto conference as Mickey glanced across at her.
‘Tell me.’
‘There’s a common theme in the travels of Stanley Meyer and this Ethan Warner guy,’ Emma reported. ‘I’ve been reviewing CCTV footage from any locations that we can be certain they have travelled through within reasonable time–frames, and then cross–referencing those with … ’
‘Stop pulling my chain, Granger, what have you got?’ Hannah snapped impatiently.
‘A Saudi security specialist,’ Emma replied, ‘by the name of Assim Khan. I’m sending a picture over to you right now.’
Hannah looked down and saw an image of a Middle–Eastern looking man, his hair graying slightly at the temples and a broad jaw beneath dark eyes.
‘What’s his story?’ Mickey asked.
‘Former Saudi Special Forces,’ Emma replied. ‘He joined a Saudi firm that specializes in security but is suspected by the CIA of being a front for assassins for hire. Assim here has been implicated in a number of hits over the years but nothing’s stuck.’
‘What’s his connection to Stanley Meyer?’ Hannah asked.
&n
bsp; ‘Assim was hired by Seavers Incorporated to provide security during a visit to Saudi Arabia by none other than Ethan Warner and Nicola Lopez. I managed to find out that the Saudi’s suffered a major military setback in the desert while Warner and Lopez were in the Kingdom but off the radar, lost an Apache gunship to militants and apparently are now trying to extradite Warner and Lopez back to stand trial.’
‘They shot down an Apache gunship?’ Hannah asked in amazement. ‘What the hell for?’
‘Who knows with these two,’ Emma replied. ‘Their names are all over files attached to the Defense Intelligence Agency, but they’re so redacted that I can’t make head nor tail out of them. At one point or another, the CIA has had an interest in the pair of them, and so has the National Reconnaissance Office.’
‘Who the hell are these guys?’ Mickey uttered in amazement.
‘Assim,’ Hannah pressed. ‘Why is he so important?’
‘Because he’s here,’ Emma replied, ‘in America, or more precisely, he landed an hour ago in Las Vegas. More than that, I’ve got images of him showing up in Virginia at the hotel. Assim Khan may be our guy, and get this, since he showed up in the country, Huck Seavers and his family have vanished.’
Hannah and Mickey exchanged a glance.
‘If Assim’s the killer, then he’s probably targeting either Warner and Lopez or the Meyers,’ Mickey said.
‘Or Huck Seavers and his family, or even all of them,’ Hannah agreed. ‘Do we have a fix on Assim Khan yet?’
‘He hired a vehicle from a rental place down on the south side,’ Emma informed Hannah and passed on the registration. ‘Do you want me to alert the local field office and get you some support. Jenkins is still in the office and I’m sure she’d clear you to…’
‘Keep Jenkins out of the loop,’ Hannah snapped. ‘Contact the Las Vegas office and inform them of everything you just told me but keep local law enforcement out of it for now other than a BOLO for the rental vehicle. Any of them locates him, they’re to pass it on to the field office. I don’t want forty squad cars with screaming sirens letting this guy know we’re onto him.’
There was a long pause on the line. ‘Jenkins will be pissed at you cutting her out.’
That smile appeared again on Hannah’s face as she replied.
‘Let her get as pissed as she likes, this one’s slipped through her fingers because she was all for shutting it down. Send my number to the Special Agent in charge down here and I’ll liase directly with them. Let’s see if we can’t close this guy down before he kills any more Americans.’
Hannah shut off the phone and turned to her partner. ‘Any time, Mickey, you’re welcome.’
‘Damn, how the hell do you manage stuff like this?’ Mickey uttered as he pulled out of the air base’s gates.
‘I got a nose for trouble,’ Hannah replied gleefully as she looked at the image of Assim Khan on her phone. ‘Let’s hope this guy does too, and we’ll let him lead us right to everybody else.’
***
XXXVIII
The Las Vegas crowds were dense, rivers of humanity flowing between endless sparkling lights flashing in the darkness. The city was like that, built in the centre of a desert plain and glowing like a galaxy of stars amid the blackness of space. Noise, heat, light, vehicles rushing to and fro, laughter, and beneath the glossy veneer a grimy underbelly of crime and suffering.
Vagrants rifled through bins overflowing with the casually discarded detritus of a humanity that possessed far more than it needed. Young dudes in shades and hoodies surreptitiously exchanged wads of cash for small packages. Hookers lingered on the corners of the darker streets, not all of them women, some of them neither fully woman nor man.
Society at both its best and its worst, a modern day Sodom intoxicated by the heady elixir of unrestrained capitalism.
Mary Meyer walked through this gloating apocalypse of excess as though striding through a valley of death. She saw nothing around her that made her admire what humanity had achieved, a life where nobody cared, where nothing really mattered but the next drink, the next hit, the next woman or man for hire in some dingy low–rent motel. She glanced up at the towering casinos and hotels, magnificent in their glamor and yet rotten to the core with greed and the criminal foundations upon which they had been built. Her beloved, brave Stanley had hated this city with all of his considerable passion, and now those who had built it had consumed him and spat him out, dead and derided and forgotten. Tears blurred her eyes, the flashing lights smeared into a kaleidoscope of color that sickened her with its unnatural haze.
She forged ahead, pulled her baseball cap low over her eyes. She was hot and uncomfortable, and not just due to the heat of the Nevada night or the disgusting display of profanity all around her. The padding she had placed under the sleeves of her shirt and trousers bulked her out, changing her appearance to conceal her from easy identification. Hair dye and clothes that she would not normally be seen dead in that emulated those of the tourists oggling at the city around them completed the illusion.
Mary knew that the government possessed the ability to identify faces from the merest glimpse on a CCTV camera, so she kept her head down and hoped that the dazzling casino lights would help camouflage her appearance further and fool the cameras. In her hand she held a cell phone, purchased for cash in a store downtown as soon as she had arrived. Upon the phone she had installed an app, which she had created herself, and distributed to a small network of people whom she had confided in from the moment she had fled Clearwater.
To have abandoned Amber in the wilderness had been the most heart–breaking thing that Mary Meyer had ever had to do in her life, and that pain only cemented in her mind the importance of what she was now endeavouring to do. Had Amber been caught, she would have been used as leverage against Mary and Stanley. But far out in the woods, she was safe enough and Mary had hoped, prayed even to a god that she did not believe in, that she would realize what had happened and find her way to safety, somewhere else.
Amber was a fighter, a spirited girl whom Mary had raised from just three months old. Her mother, a drunken drug abuser out of Bedford, had abandoned the baby girl on the doorstep of All Saint’s Church in the town. Mary and Stanley had searched for just such a baby, one given no good start in life, and had been successful in adopting Amber. They had given her a life that otherwise would have been denied, for her mother had died of a drug overdose four years later in a shack in Villamont. Amber had never asked about her and Mary, with relief, had never made an attempt to speak of the dead woman.
The phone in her hand buzzed and she looked down at it.
The app revealed her location in the city, as tracked by local cell phone towers, and also displayed the location of some fifty accomplices moving through the city in various locations.
It had not been hard to recruit people to her cause. With one hundred million dollars available to her and a willingness to approach just the right kind of people for the job, she had assembled a small force of like–minded individuals who had followed her work on Low Energy Nuclear Reactions for years, and it had only cost her a couple of million dollars to do so – half the payments already in place, the other half when the task was complete. Now, her faithful minions were scurrying this way and that across the city, all of them with a small but essential task.
And now Amber was with her, and ready to play her part, a more crucial one now than Mary would ever have dared to hope for. But in the wake of Stanley’s death, Amber had been clear: she wanted in.
Mary had spent a few weeks identifying the critical power–supply lines streaming into Las Vegas from the surrounding power stations that fed the city’s enormous appetite for electrical power. Gorging itself like some gigantic, hideous monster, Las Vegas glowed with its greed for power, consuming more energy in one day than some towns did in an entire year. Each of those power cables represented a high–voltage intravenous line that kept the city alive and also prevented its inhabitants from suffering
the heat of Nevada’s mid–day sun, while also providing the power for water pressure to prevent them from dying of thirst, and energy for sewage works and treatment plants that spared them the ignoble fate of drowning in their own waste.
All of it required power, and Mary Meyer now held that power in her hand. On the screen as she glanced at it, amid all the tiny green dots that represented her work force, was a single blue dot that remained steady and still, far to the bottom right of the display.
The Fusion Cage.
Mary’s plan was deceptively simple. At the required time, the minions she now employed would each detonate an explosive charge that would sever the high voltage lines coming into the city. In a single, bold stroke she would cut Las Vegas off from its energy supply, starving the beast within seconds. The lights of Las Vegas would go off, along with all computer networks, phones, Internet, air conditioning, water supply, sewage treatment, everything, gone, in an instant.
In the same instant, at a location only she herself knew, she would deactivate the only available source of power that could save Las Vegas’s poisonous strip from economic collapse. Then, and only then, would she reveal her hand.
She knew that the casinos would bend to her will. Devoid of power and reliant upon generators that only possessed enough fuel for a few hours’ of work, they would be facing ruin as the gamblers flocked away in their droves. Without power the casinos were nothing, gigantic monoliths to greed and cash that held no sway over their countless victims. But Mary could change all of that, and not only return the power to them but also provide it entirely for free, saving them millions of dollars in energy bills.
Mary had long ago accepted that to change the world, you first had to grab the people with the money by the balls.
The Fusion Cage (Warner & Lopez Book 2) Page 28