by Declan Finn
Chapter 3
Wayne enjoyed breaking into the J. Edgar Hoover building, it was a stimulating challenge after years of low-tech security. He had ditched the security officer’s utility belt and cap in an out of the way garbage can, and tossed his suit jacket back on over the white shirt. He had taken a taxi out of the airport.
There were, of course, obstacles in his way—a pebble in his shoe, some barbed wire—but all in all, it was a pleasant experience. The security cameras were easy to run past—there were plenty of cars for cover—and even easier to time.
It wasn’t hard to spot the car he wanted in the underground parking lot. There weren’t many limousines parked in the FBI lot whose driver sat on the hood reading a magazine.
* * * *
Catherine Miller sat, legs crossed, in the first class cabin of the jet her Company paid for. She had been told it would make it across the Atlantic in four hours. She knew immediately from the expense of the flight how important her next mission was. Her missions were almost all labeled URGENT and TOP SECRET, but this one had jangled the nerves of her boss.
So this had to be about the end of the world…or maybe an audit.
* * * *
Treasury Secretary Judith Stevens walked briskly to her car, her steps echoing in the silence of the enclosed lot. Her driver sat upright in the front seat of the limo, which was parked next to another car. She had waited two hours after Williams was reported missing.
Now her patience had run out.
The sixty-year-old had started her career as an accountant and worked her way up to CEO of the country’s largest firm of tax lawyers and accountants, experiencing firsthand the maliciousness of the old IRS production quota system. She had spent years fighting higher and higher levels of a “Service” that “protected the revenue” by setting collection “goals” for its auditors. Now that she was in charge of them, IRS agents trembled with fear. Her once flaming red hair had intermingled with the ever-spreading silver, and her blue eyes often seemed incandescent. Her white suit contrasted greatly with the gray suits around her, emphasizing her presence.
The Secretary of Treasury opened the car door and got in, knowing her driver had been properly reeducated to believe in women’s lib—he would not dare hold the door open for her. Judith slid into the limo, pulling the door closed. When she settled in, looking out the front window, she saw him in her peripheral vision, sitting off to her left in the seat across from her, legs crossed, hands folded on one knee.
“Secretary Stevens, you wanted to speak with me?” Williams asked her.
She arched a brow. “I had thought about it, then you stood me up.”
“Sorry, ma’am, but the last time Director Scofield and I met, he said all FBI personnel had standing orders to shoot me on sight.” Williams shrugged. “I took him at his word.”
“So you came anyway?”
Wayne smiled at her. “Just to annoy him, ma’am. And, by the way, your driver will be fine in another…”—he glanced at his watch—“two hours or so. I stole just enough tranquilizers from the medicine cabinet to take him down for a short while.”
“No matter, it’s not as though…” she paused in mid thought. “Just whose medicine cabinet did you steal it from?”
“Director Scofield’s, ma’am. His private bathroom has a medicine cabinet like a pharmacy. He hasn’t been taking care of himself.”
“I was only in his office ten minutes ago.”
“Yes, ma’am. I saw you. Did you find my file interesting?”
* * * *
At Langley, CIA Director Grant sat behind his oak desk, flipping through a file folder three inches thick. Grant had a triangular shaped face, iron-blonde hair, and cold, piercing blue eyes that had stared down “cultural attaches”—spies with diplomatic immunity—from all over the world. But at the moment, those eyes were covered by reading glasses perched precariously on the tip of his nose. His head was bowed, almost all his concentration focused on the pages before him. His assistant sat on the other side of his desk, waiting for Grant to finish.
“His file makes for very, very interesting reading, Did you know this man, this Williams, actually had CIA training?” he marveled.
“Will you tell STRONGBOW about him?”
“No reason why we shouldn’t. If he’s as good as his file says, they’ll probably run into each other, most likely at the most inconvenient time imaginable. When’s she due in?”
“STRONGBOW will arrive in about fifteen minutes.”
* * * *
“So,” Wayne thought aloud, “the President receives a death threat involving nuclear weapons, and you come to me? Don’t you have a little department for things like this?”
“Yes. It used to be you,” Stevens told him.
“It used to be. I’m very past, and—at the moment—I’m very tense. It’s not that I’m ungrateful for the chance to get out of the swamps, but what the hell does Scofield have to do with this?”
“The bomb threat was sent through email, a federal offense.”
Wayne made a disgusted grimace. “So the FBI comes in because of an email regulation? God bless all the different meanings to ‘crime committed by wire’.”
“But you’re going to go after who did this, of course.”
“You think I would’ve even gotten on the plane if I wasn’t still dedicated to presidential service? What’s the President’s itinerary?”
Judith took a folder from her bag. She opened it. “On January second, he’s visiting Northern Ireland, trying to calm down the last of the half dozen IRA/Provo groups still active.”
He smirked. “Only a half dozen? I must have lost count.”
She ignored him and continued, turning a page. “January fifth, he goes to Rome to talk with Pope Pius XIII. The seventh, he’ll go to Jerusalem to speak at the Dome of the Rock, hopefully before someone tries to blow it up. February first, the President will be in Serbia while the government is stable.”
“It’s a government. By definition it’s unstable… at least the politicians are.”
“On the ninth, he’ll chat with the Indian government officials about the wisdom of rattling one’s sabers and not one’s nuclear stockpile. In Moscow on the fourteenth, he’ll talk with the Prime Minister.”
Wayne scoffed. “Since Weaver’s an ex-SEAL and the PM is ex-KGB, I expect any arguments will be settled with arm-wrestling and beer.”
“On the 11th, he’ll be celebrating our close relations with Taiwan after the last war. The 12th, he’ll be visiting the newly formed Republic of Hong Kong.”
“Kissing up to future campaign contributors,” Williams muttered.
“Wrong President,” Judith snapped. “On March third, Singapore will be praised for having such a low crime rate, and President Weaver will announce the new drug laws he’ll send to Congress a month later. Then on the seventh, it’s back home.”
Wayne shook his head, chuckling. “Ma’am, who does the President think he is, the Pope?”
“He thinks he’s an ex-SEAL who believes it easier to intimidate someone after they see how big he is compared to them.”
“Great, another Lyndon Johnson. Aside from where these nukes came from, and that the nuts who sent the email know how to turn on a computer, what do we know?”
* * * *
“We know almost nothing,” Grant told Catherine Miller, code name STRONGBOW. “Any car owner could trade in his new Mercedes for a nuke.” He held his forehead in his hand as he sat back in his chair.
“But they were all bought presumably at once, sir,” Catherine told him, sitting straight in the chair across from Grant. She wore a greenish-brown Marine uniform, a common enough sight at Langley. Her legs were crossed at the ankles. “It doesn’t seem rational to just buy up ten nuclear weapons over the course of years and one day decide the President’s itinerary matches up perfectly.”
“STRONGBOW, we’re living in a country where Don Quixote is the model of sanity, I can’t see the world as muc
h different.”
“Yes, sir. But Don Quixote wouldn’t be organized enough to put each weapon in place. It’s not as though this monster’s going to label each one ‘Do not open until Xmas,’ and then mail them to people in the general area…Especially in Palestine. Anything else?”
“Yes, the note mentioned our ‘Imperialist ways.’ This could mean someone who thinks Lenin is God.”
* * * *
“It could also mean this guy’s been watching too many Cold War propaganda movies on TCM,” Stevens explained to Wayne.
“Most likely the latter,” Williams replied. “If this were a real Communist hard-liner, half of the document would be about the evils of capitalism and the good old days of the glorious Soviet Union, not to mention longer. So who’s left? The home grown wackos and who else?”
* * * *
“Could there be someone from the President’s old SEAL days, sir?” Catherine suggested to Grant.
“Most of the missions he went on were above TOP SECRET…documents stating the missions even took place don’t exist.”
“Which means there has to be something more behind this than simple intimidation value,” Catherine concluded.
* * * *
“I mean, come on, there’s no reason to give adequate warning if this nut case really needs to kill the President,” Wayne explained to Judith Stevens.
“Needs to?” Judith asked.
“Think of it in terms of serial killers. They like killing people, and they’re driven to the point of killing over and over again. This guy isn’t nuts. If his reasons to kill President Weaver were psychological, like a serial killer’s urge, you wouldn’t have gotten a note. Whoever this is, is as sane as can be. He probably has some very good reasons for keeping the President out of those countries. What they are is beyond me.”
* * * *
“Some imagined slight, a hatred for the US, just for fun,” Grant said as he rattled off reasons, pacing behind his desk.
“Or something we haven’t thought of,” Catherine said. “If these people are smart enough to do what they say—and, for the moment, let’s presume they are—then what else are they smart enough to think up?”
* * * *
“But motivations are beside the point…at least for the moment,” Stevens told Wayne. “What’s important now is that you find the backpack devices before the President arrives. We have copies of his itinerary, and if there’s anything else you might need, just ask. Is there anything else?”
* * * *
“There’s one slight complication,” Grant told her, hovering over his desk, looking through a file. “His name’s Williams. Wayne Williams. A Secret Service agent assigned to the same case as you are.”
“Will he cause a problem, sir?”
“You could say that. You’re going to want to read his file; memorize it. There’s also something I need to tell you about his father.”
“His father?”
* * * *
“I won’t need a copy of the itinerary, Madam Secretary,” Wayne said, handing the papers back to her. “The newspapers will advertise it often enough.”
“If you insist. What will you do next?”
The rocket detonated against the side of the limo before Wayne could answer.
Chapter 4
The rocket hit the limousine’s left broadside, engulfing the car in flames. The heat didn’t even scorch the windows. The limo kicked up onto its right wheels, sending Wayne and Stevens sliding across their seats into the side doors. The limo came crashing back onto the ground, nearly tilting onto its left side.
“I’m glad I insisted on getting a reconditioned presidential limo,” Stevens muttered as she pushed off the seat, sitting up. “It’s built like the President’s down to the paint job.”
Wayne twisted and leapt over the front seat, hitting a button on the control panel next to the radio. A mechanical whir sounded as metal armor slid up the inside and outside of the windows and windshields.
“How did you know—?”
Wayne pulled back from the front. “I figured the tank-like armor wouldn’t help if the bulletproof windows shattered under a rocket blast, so I added this design into the blueprints.”
“What?”
“Excuse me,” Wayne said as he reached past Judith for the sill of the back windshield. He pressed down on it once, and the sill popped back up, revealing medical equipment and several Uzi submachine guns.
Williams smiled. “Exactly like the President’s limo.”
Judith could accept the smile at finding the weapons cache, but the look of joy in his eyes caused a frisson of fear.
Wayne grabbed one Uzi and a handful of mags, jamming them into the inside pocket of his suit. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Out the right-hand side, go!”
Secretary Stevens pushed the door open and they both leapt out.
“Just keep your head down and keep moving straight ahead,” Wayne ordered, glancing over his shoulder.
They were twenty feet away when the next impact slammed the limo over, rolling it onto its roof. Stevens ran faster, aiming for the precious shelter between a black Chevy Mazda and a blue VW Bug. Wayne crouched down beside her as the next rocket detonated on the vulnerable underside of the limousine.
“I knew they’d never take my advice on the last part,” Wayne muttered as he watched the scrap metal that was the limo. He turned to Judith. “Get back inside, give them my description, tell them I’m not the bad guy. We have at least four scumbags out here, and they don’t seem to like you. Run!”
* * * *
Special Agent Blaine Lansing hadn’t been long for the FBI world. He had figured it would look good on a resume. He went from his cushy graduate work at TCI to what he called the FBI’s “NetForce,” nicknamed after the Tom Clancy novels. He figured that, in another year—maybe less—he might make it to working security at some big company like IBMicrosoft, one of the broken branches of Gates’ fallen empire. With his twenty-nine-year-old looks, he figured anyone would naturally take him for a yuppie… especially in the Federal Bureau suits he had to wear for work. He had dark short hair, and a bland but handsome face that meant he rarely got noticed. Unless he was at a bar— he still got carded.
Then the call to arms came down from on high, almost instantly after the building shook.
Heavily armed? Blaine thought. He took out his standard .45 caliber Heckler and Koch semi-automatic and glanced at it. This isn’t heavy enough? It’s not like we’re taking down Terminator 6.
* * * *
Wayne glanced back at Stevens. She was almost to the elevator door when, suddenly, she dropped to the ground, sprawled out flat. A red stain spread in the middle of her white suit jacket. A whip-crack sounded through the air an instant later.
Rifles!
FBI agents scurried out of the elevator.
Wayne darted for the most open space of the parking lot, wanting to take his chances with the rifles and not the FBI agents. He dashed in a straight line for five seconds, then spiked off to his left, barely missing the next bullet. Wayne leapt behind a red convertible before the Agents fired their first volley.
Williams looked out across the parking lot and didn’t see too many options, but plenty of cars. Wayne leapt to his feet and fired a burst around the Agents. They fell back, carrying Secretary Stevens with them.
Heat singed by his ear, followed by the distinct whip-crack of a rifle bullet from behind him. Wayne dropped to a crouch. The others were still out there. Unless it was a team of eight—two man to carry each—they had run out of rockets. Such as it was, there were at least a half dozen men out to get him.
Not to mention about a dozen or so agents.
Wayne glanced over his shoulder and put a round into the gas tank of the gray Taurus behind him. Gasoline spread over the asphalt as Wayne dashed for the next row of cars over, firing blind at the agents to his right. He leapt between two cars, rolling as he landed. His gun came u
p, leveled at the pooling gasoline, and fired. The bullet sparked against the tarmac, igniting the gas.
The explosion took out three cars, kicking the Ford Taurus into the concrete structure ceiling, destroying three overhead lights. Yet another round of fire preceded the explosion. Wayne had to hand it to them; they were hard to deter. He moved against the wall next to a bumper, the rail separating sections only inches above his head. He could probably climb the rail with ease, but not without taking fire. He needed cover, and the cars weren’t tall enough to provide it for him. Several agents were already approaching, covered by the others who stayed behind. Sooner than later, they’d leapfrog their way toward him.
The only way out was up. One floor up, to be precise.
Wayne stood up as high as he dared, and raked gunfire across the ceiling from right to left, taking out half of the lights on his side of the parking level. He moved his gun hand from left to right, emptying the magazine against the remaining lights. He quickly ejected the magazine and jammed in the next one. He fired a quick burst toward the FBI agents and was rewarded by a hail of lead. Williams unleashed another torrent of fire against the lights above and just behind him, hitting most of the lights on the next parking level. The remaining lights farthest away from Wayne created an artificial well of darkness, making it nearly impossible to see what wasn’t touched by direct light.