Then she had doused her headlights, waited a moment, and pulled a U-turn and reentered the road behind the Lincoln.
The rest of the trip went the same way. Tracie varied her distance behind the Iraqis, never getting close enough for any sharp-eyed passenger ahead to identify her vehicle. For a short time, driving through a heavily wooded area, she followed with her lights off, counting on the lack of horizon behind her to make the Buick invisible to the kidnappers.
Eventually, the Town Car’s brake lights flashed and it made a sharp left, leaving the road and disappearing. It was as if the car had vanished into thin air a thousand feet in front of Tracie. She had been approaching a four-way junction, the road still and deserted, and she immediately signaled for a right turn and drove onto the crossroad at a ninety-degree angle to her prey.
She continued a hundred feet and felt confident she had gone far enough to be invisible to any sentry posted where the Lincoln had exited the road. Tracie had caught glimpses of the Atlantic Ocean through the trees to her left for the past several miles, vast and dark and empty, and if the car carrying J. Robert Humphries had turned onto an access road in that direction, she knew it couldn’t have gone far before reaching the water’s edge.
She drove off the road and parked. It was time to continue on foot.
She set the emergency brake and prepared to leave the car behind, wondering how long it would take for it to be discovered and towed as an abandoned vehicle.
She wished she still had her backpack filled with goodies. She cursed herself for not taking the time to retrieve it before leaving the abandoned school back in D.C. There was nothing in it that could be used to identify her, but still, it had contained some things that might have come in handy.
As it was, she was a little light on supplies. She had her Beretta and two Makarovs: the one she had taken off “Muhammad” after knocking him unconscious outside the school building, and the one she had removed from her unnamed Iraqi captor back inside the school.
Three handguns would be too unwieldy without any way to carry them, so she stashed one of the Makarovs in the glove box and while doing so, found a small flashlight, which she grabbed. It might come in handy.
She cupped a hand over the flashlight’s lens and thumbed the on-off switch. A weak beam of light struggled out. Tracie shook her head in frustration.
Thought for a moment.
Then she stepped out of Marshall’s car and knelt on the damp ground next to the front door. Directed the flickering beam beneath the dashboard under the steering wheel.
There. Running out from under the plastic steering-column housing was a series of a half-dozen different colored electrical wires. Two of them would be the ignition wires. What function the rest might have, Tracie didn’t know or care. The wires were held together with a plastic clip and ran in a neat line out of the housing and along the underside of the dashboard, where they snaked under the frayed seven-year-old carpeting and disappeared into the engine compartment.
Tracie mumbled, “Sorry, Marshall,” and wriggled her fingers under the edge of the carpeting. She struggled for several seconds before getting a solid grip. Then she yanked hard. The carpeting pulled away from the firewall accompanied by the sound of dried glue ripping and plastic anchors popping. When she had finished, the carpeting hung folded onto the floor under the foot pedals, exposing several feet of wiring.
She wrapped her fist around the wiring and began pulling. After a moment’s resistance, the wires pulled free, trailing out of the engine compartment like tiny snakes where they had broken from their connectors. Then she reached as far up under the steering column housing as she could and performed the same maneuver.
The result was a roughly six-foot length of electrical wiring. Not ideal, but the best she was going to do, considering her time constraints. The clock was ticking and she really had to move. But, she felt better having the wiring. There were plenty of potential uses for it. She just hoped she hadn’t wasted too much time getting it.
She also hoped she hadn’t made a serious tactical error in disabling Marshall’s Buick. If she was successful in rescuing Humphries, she now had no car and no way of escaping the area. But rescuing the secretary of state meant neutralizing the men holding him, and if she could do that, she should be able to use their Lincoln to escape.
Tracie wound the wires into a loose ball and shoved it into the right front pocket of her jeans. The small flashlight went into her left front pocket. Then she closed and locked the car and began trotting along the edge of the road. At the intersection, she slowed and peered cautiously into the darkness in the direction the Lincoln had disappeared maybe three minutes ago.
It was quiet. Apparently deserted.
She crossed the road thankful for her dark clothing, and disappeared into the woods on the far side. Ten feet in, Tracie veered right ninety degrees and hiked south as quickly as she was able, stealthy and silent, keeping the dark mass of the Atlantic Ocean on her left and the deserted strip of pavement off to her right.
One hundred feet turned into two hundred and then the distinctive smell of cigarette smoke alerted Tracie to the presence of another human being. The Iraqis had posted a sentry after all, albeit a careless one.
She slowed and moved even more cautiously, flitting from tree to tree, careful not to step on a dead twig or tree branch and alert the guard to her presence.
Ten feet later she saw it. The flare of a lit cigarette as its owner took a deep drag. She paused and watched, alert for the possibility of a second sentry. The man leaned on a large boulder next to the rough trail. He wasn’t quite sitting, but wasn’t standing at attention, either, and he didn’t seem too interested in keeping watch.
He finished his cigarette.
Flicked it away, yawned and stretched.
Tracie assumed he was wearing a holstered pistol but couldn’t tell for sure. What she could see was that he wasn’t holding a weapon in either hand.
She shrank back, carefully retracing her steps for at least twenty feet into the cover of the forest. Then she circled behind the sentry, crossing the trail between his position and the shoreline, where by now the Iraqis must have begun loading Humphries into their helicopter. She couldn’t hear the whine of the chopper’s engine or the distinctive whup-whup-whupping of the rotors biting at the air, but still, she knew she had to hurry.
She considered ignoring the sentry entirely now that she had gotten past him. It was tempting, and she almost did exactly that. But she had no real plan for retrieving Humphries, and whatever action she had to take would likely involve a significant amount of noise, probably including gunfire. She simply couldn’t take the chance of the sentry hearing the commotion and coming running, shooting her in the back as she traded fire with the men in the helicopter.
So she would have to take the time to eliminate him. She lowered herself to the cold ground and combat-crawled across the trail, Beretta held securely in her right hand. She held her breath and waited for the shout of alarm to come from off her right side that would tell her she had been spotted.
Or worse, for a bullet in the back.
Nothing.
Seconds later she was back under the reassuring cover of the woods. Tracie picked a fist-sized rock up off the trail and got to her feet. She weaved from tree to tree, steadily moving toward the sentry’s last known position.
Then she was there. Behind him.
Incredibly, the man still hadn’t moved. He leaned against the boulder, the picture of boredom. His attention was directed at the empty roadway, but he hadn’t exhibited the slightest bit of initiative since she had first spotted him. Jeez, no wonder the Iraqis gave this guy the simplest job.
She crept as close as she dared, knowing he was unlikely to turn around unless a noise gave her away. Less than five feet behind him she stopped. She could hear him breathe, his respiration slow and steady.
Holding the Beretta in her right hand, she hefted the rock with her left. She lobbed it silently, gre
nade style, over the sentry’s head in the direction of the road. A second later it struck the pavement, bouncing once and then skittering onto the shoulder.
Instantly, he jolted, fully alert. He shoved off the boulder and spread his feet, dropping into a shooter’s crouch as he lifted his weapon and peered in the direction of the noise.
Perfect.
Tracie used the sound of the man’s movements to mask her own. She sprang forward, lifting her right hand and pistol-whipping the guard. The butt of her Beretta smashed into his skull just above the right ear and he crumpled noiselessly to the ground, dropping his weapon at his feet as he landed face-first on the forest floor.
Tracie bent and hefted it. Another Makarov. Of course. The Iraqis must have purchased or stolen the damned things by the truckload. She had no room to carry it, so she ejected the magazine and scattered the rounds on the forest floor as far from the unconscious sentry as she was able without making too much noise. Then she tossed the now-useless pistol into the woods in the opposite direction.
She turned back to the man and leaned over him. He was bleeding heavily from the head wound, but his breathing was regular and his pulse was strong. He would live.
The man had been wearing a light windbreaker against the overnight chill, and Tracie slipped it off his back. She rolled up one sleeve and stuffed it into his mouth and then fished the bundle of electrical wires out of her pocket. She unwound the ball, moving quickly, wondering why she had still not heard the sound of the helicopter preparing for departure.
When the wires were separated, she took one strand and used it to secure the improvised gag in the sentry’s mouth, winding it around his skull twice and then twisting the stiff wire into a knot behind his head.
Then she took two more strands and fashioned them into a makeshift rope. She bound his wrists together behind his back, lashing them to a six-inch-thick young maple tree that had grown thankfully close to the boulder where the man had been standing. When he awoke, he would be unable to cry out for help and, unless he was the Middle Eastern descendant of Harry Houdini, unable to escape.
It was the best she could do.
She turned, cursing at herself for wasting valuable time, and sprinted along the trail toward the shoreline. As she ran, she could hear the sound of an engine firing up. But it wasn’t a helicopter engine; the sound of their rotors turning was unique and instantly recognizable.
This sounded more like a car’s engine turning over.
Had the Iraqis changed their mind? Had their plan changed for some reason? Would a set of automobile headlights suddenly flash on, bathing her in their light and rendering her helpless?
Tracie had no idea. All she knew was that she had come too far to stop. She said a silent prayer and sprinted on.
38
Thursday, September 10, 1987
5:50 a.m.
Near Ocean City, Maryland
It was a boat.
After running no more than two hundred feet along the rutted dirt trail that passed for a road, concerned that at any moment she would step in a pothole and break an ankle, Tracie suddenly found herself approaching a clearing. Parked in the clearing was the Lincoln Town Car she had tailed.
But it sat empty and silent.
And there was no helicopter anywhere in sight.
Instead, there was a boat. It looked to Tracie to be about a twenty-five footer and it had been tied to an ancient wooden dock that threatened to fall apart and crash into the water at any moment. As she looked on in confusion, Tracie could see two men, one of whom was forcing the other into the boat.
The grey early-morning light of an overcast day made it hard to see, but undoubtedly the reluctant boater was J. Robert Humphries, and undoubtedly he was being prodded at gunpoint. His head hung and his shoulders slumped, and the man on the dock pushed him into the boat. Then the man untied a rope line from the dock and leapt aboard.
The engine, which had been idling patiently, instantly roared as the second Iraqi hit the throttle. The boat lunged forward and turned into the small inlet, heading for the Atlantic Ocean beyond.
Tracie drew her weapon and brought it to bear on the boat, knowing immediately she was too late. She was unlikely to hit anything from this distance, with the craft moving rapidly away, and even if she did, she was just as likely to strike Humphries as a kidnapper.
“Goddammit!” she muttered, lowering her weapon and staring in shock at the retreating boat. What the hell had just happened?
She shook her head to clear the confusion and realized she would just have to treat the scenario like she would any overseas operation that had just gone to shit. She would improvise.
She picked a direction at random—north—and began sprinting along the shoreline. The inlet was heavily wooded and the open Atlantic was just beyond its mouth, and yet the water here was docile and calm, perfect for vacationing and camping and pleasure boating.
There would have to be cabins constructed in the immediate area. Maybe she would get lucky and find a boat she could “borrow” to follow the Iraqis. The kidnappers’ speeding craft was growing steadily smaller as it raced toward the ocean, but she could still see it, barely, fading away into the darkness.
The boat was heading directly toward the northern end of the inlet’s mouth. This meant that not only were the Iraqis not transporting Humphries via helicopter, they weren’t heading toward North Carolina, either. Everything she had overheard just before the confrontation with the Iraqis in the abandoned school building was false. Everything.
And then it struck her. It was so obvious she should have thought of it before.
The kidnappers had planted false information regarding their plans because they knew Tracie had been listening at the door! The man she had eventually overcome to escape the schoolhouse had been following her from the time she climbed into the school building until the moment he stuck his gun in her ear, so they had had plenty of time to improvise the misinformation.
They had wanted Tracie to overhear the dramatic intel about the helicopter, just in case she was in contact with anyone else. It was a kind of failsafe. They had never intended to transport Humphries south out of Ocean City in a helicopter; had never intended to fly him out of North Carolina in a Learjet, either.
She had been played for a dupe and had fallen for it, hook, line and sinker.
Anger flared inside her—directed mostly at herself—as well as a grudging respect for her opponent. She had underestimated the Iraqis, had been doing so all along, because they weren’t the vaunted Soviets who the United States had been trading covert operations with for decades.
The Iraqis were new to the world of international espionage, and so she had not taken them as seriously as she should have. And now, J. Robert Humphries was paying for her poor judgment.
She pushed herself harder, leaping over fallen branches and dodging trees and underbrush as she charged along the water’s edge. Night’s blackness was giving way to daylight, but the steel-grey skies were surrendering light reluctantly, and the Iraqis’ boat had disappeared into the darkness. She could still hear the scream of its engine as it raced toward the open ocean, but soon even that would be gone.
She rounded a bend in the rocky shoreline and saw what she had been hoping for. A powerboat tied to a rickety dock was bobbing gently in the distance. A small cabin set back roughly forty feet from the shoreline made clear to whom the boat belonged, but a quick glance to the rear of the building confirmed that no car was parked in the small driveway.
The cabin appeared deserted.
If true, that was good news, but Tracie couldn’t afford to lose the time it would take to ensure the cabin was empty. Once the Iraqis made it to the Atlantic, they would disappear, swallowed up by the watery expanse, with Tracie no closer to rescuing Humphries than she had been two days ago.
She had to risk it. If the boat’s owner was inside, hopefully he was still asleep. He would never be able to react quickly enough to interfere once Tracie fired
up the engine and pointed the craft away from the shore.
She moved directly to the dock, padding down it quickly but quietly. The boat looked to be about a twenty-three footer, roughly the same size as the one the kidnappers were using, with a crisp white paint job and a small enclosed cabin. The name Tequila Sunset was stenciled proudly on the stern.
Tracie clambered aboard, breathing heavily. Her uncle was an avid weekend boater and had once told her that most recreational mariners kept a spare key hidden somewhere inside their boat. They often lived a fair distance from where they moored their craft and didn’t want to have to turn around and go home in the event they forgot their key. He had shown her where his spare key was stored, and had suggested that many other boat owners utilized the same location.
She headed directly to the rear outboard engine and decided to test his theory. If he was right, and the key was where she hoped it would be, she would save a little time. If not, she would abandon the search and immediately begin working on hot-wiring the engine.
She knelt between two gas cans lashed to the deck at the stern and couldn’t help glancing toward the mouth of the inlet. The Iraqis’ boat was gone. Their engine noise was now just a thin whine, soft on the early-morning air like the buzz of a mosquito.
Dammit.
With a renewed intensity, Tracie got to work. She clawed a long combination cushion/flotation device off the bench seat running along the port side. The seat was hinged at the rear, as she had suspected it would be. She lifted from the front and the seat cover swiveled upward, revealing a storage locker underneath.
Picking through it quickly, Tracie found life vests, some fishing equipment and other assorted vacation necessities, but nothing that looked like what she was hoping to find.
She lowered the seat and replaced the cushions and turned to the other side, repeating the procedure. This time she hit pay dirt. A metal toolbox had been fitted snugly into the bottom of the storage space, crammed between more faded orange life vests and a pile of plastic fishing bobbers.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 46