Walk the Wire

by David Baldacci

  “They were in my report.”

  “But they were not highlighted. They were buried, in fact. A single sentence for both organs. And you took no photos of them. You should have drawn our attention to them. That’s standard protocol.”

  To this, Southern shrugged. “But you found out about them. So what’s the problem? No harm, no foul.”

  “If you have to ask a question like that I’m not sure you’re in the job you need to be in.”

  Southern scowled. “I do this out of a sense of public duty. It’s not like they pay much.”

  Decker glanced at Kelly, who didn’t look inclined to say anything.

  Southern said, “So you think she might have had something inside her?”

  “Did you find any trace of that?” said Jamison.

  “Because if you did it wasn’t in your report,” noted Decker.

  “That’s because I found no trace of any foreign substance inside her stomach or intestines.”

  “And you specifically looked?” asked Decker.

  “I checked the organs.”

  “Did you give the stomach and intestines a more focused look because of the way in which they had been sliced open?” Decker wanted to know.

  “I was thorough. And that’s all I’m going to say on the matter. If you got a problem with that, you can take it up with Joe. Now, if we’re done here? I’ll have my very thorough report ready for you later today.”

  And with that Southern walked out.

  Decker stood there for a minute and then walked over to the body of Pamela Ames and lifted the sheet. The Y-incision stared back at him along with the dead woman’s pale face.

  No electric blue light again, thought Decker. My brain keeps me guessing and I don’t much care for it. No, I hate it.

  “Decker?” Jamison said, coming to stand next to him. “You okay?”

  Decker curtly nodded.

  Kelly said, “I wish you could have given me a heads-up on all that.”

  “What are you going to do about it now that you know?”

  “What can I do? It was in the report, right?”

  “Not where it optimally should have been.”

  “Optimally? I can’t take that and run with it. Hell, without Walt we don’t have anyone here who can do posts. I don’t see that I have many options.”

  “I would think that you have options for somebody like that.”

  “You can’t believe that Walt would have intentionally—”

  Decker cut him off. “I don’t believe or disbelieve anything until I can prove it. Just so we’re straight on that.”

  He put the cover back on Ames’s remains, then walked out of the room and slammed the door behind him.

  “I take it he’s pissed,” said Kelly.

  “And I think he has every right to be,” retorted Jamison.

  And with that Jamison left, leaving Joe Kelly alone with a corpse.

  WILL ROBIE WAS ON THE MOVE. It was night, and a warm rain was falling. He was on foot, dressed in a camouflaged ghillie suit, with a pair of night optics, and a GPS tracker mounted on his forearm. Under the ghillie was Level 3A body armor along with rifle plates that could stop and disperse all handgun rounds and most rifle rounds. They offered superb stab and spike protection as well. Unless someone got a head or femoral artery shot on him, then it was over.

  He took up position on a slight rise of earth and surveyed the area in front of him through the optics. To the left were the lights of the Brothers’ Colony, and to the right those of the Air Force station. And then there were the oil rigs surrounding these two facilities like a hostile army ringing an enemy.

  There was movement at the oil rigs as people and trucks came and went. He could see the lights of vehicles moving across the land owned by the Brothers. The radar array sat high above all this activity as it scanned the night skies for incoming nukes and other space traffic.

  Amos Decker had been described to him in three precise words: brilliant, quirky, relentless. After meeting the man he hadn’t gotten to see the quirky part so much, but Decker certainly seemed intelligent enough. And he hoped the relentless part was spot on because the man was going to need it. His partner, Alex Jamison, had an excellent rep at the Bureau. Partners were important, Robie knew. He was missing his partner on this assignment. Jessica Reel was currently in a different and far more dangerous part of the world. Although this area of North Dakota certainly seemed to have its share of violence.

  He got up from his position and moved forward with efficient strides of his long legs.

  The outer perimeter of the Air Force station loomed in front of him.

  Robie’s people had tried to do this the nice way and had gotten zip for their politeness.

  Now Robie had been sent here to do it the impolite way.

  He had brought some tools with him in case he came across any opposition but had been instructed to use them judiciously. His orders were also to not kill anyone in his path tonight. Of course, those on the other side would have no compunction about doing that to him, since they would see him as only an intruder. An intruder looking for the truth, but an intruder, nonetheless.

  He had a map of the facility downloaded on his phone, and he stopped to take a brief scan of the outer perimeter. It was sophisticated and had been thoughtfully implemented by people who knew what they were doing.

  Yet he had been told about a sliver of a blind spot in the facility’s defenses. It took him ten seconds to scale the first perimeter fence. His gloves with metal mesh palms allowed him to easily circumvent the concertina wire atop the fence. He dropped down to the other side and eyed the ground in front of him. Fortunately, he knew that pressure plates aligned at two-foot intervals and set at forty-five-degree angles ran off the support posts for the fence. Best-case scenario, if he stepped on one an alarm would go off. Worst-case scenario, Robie would be blown to nothing.

  He picked his steps carefully and safely reached the interior perimeter fence. This had double rows of razor wire toppers, and it took him longer to get over it than he ideally wanted. He dropped silently to the ground and squatted there, watching and listening. This endeavor made up three-quarters of most of his missions; this was the part that allowed him to live. So he paid attention to it, gave it the due it deserved. He wanted to walk out of here, not be carried out in a body bag.

  Now the easy part was over.

  The one unknown for him was whether they deployed dogs here. His intel had been sketchy on that. Dogs were almost impossible to defeat, at least for long. But if they were present, he had brought something that would help him overcome this obstacle.

  There were surveillance cameras along the pedestrian routes, but he also knew where each of them was, and he stayed out of their lines of sight.

  He saw the first sentry up ahead dressed in black with body armor and carrying a sub gun with a thirty-round extended mag and a walkie-talkie attached by Velcro to his shirtfront. A sweep light mounted on a tower was making its rounds over the ground. Robie watched its routine and then moved forward, avoiding its glare.

  He drew to a stop about fifteen feet later and waited for the guard to finish his walk. When he disappeared around the corner of one building, Robie crept forward, his gaze moving across the area in front of him, side to side, then a look backward to check his full rear flank.

  Two more guards appeared on the scene and they were joined by another—not an armed guard, but a woman dressed in civilian clothes. They all shared a smoke and talked. Robie strained to hear what they were saying but couldn’t quite make it out.

  The woman finally left and the guards moved on, one going right and the other left.

  Robie skirted along the shadows, occasionally looking down at his GPS tracker and the facility map on his phone. The building he wanted was up on the right. He reached the door but, after looking at it, decided not to make his entry that way.

  He crept around the corner and eyed the window there. Basic snip lock, blinds half drawn. H
e risked hitting the window with his light to check the inside edge for signs of an alarm port. He saw none.

  That was when he heard someone coming.

  With his knife he flipped the lock, raised the window, slipped inside, and closed it a few seconds before a figure passed by. As he gazed out the window in the direction of the pyramid building he saw something extraordinary. Three guards came out of a side door pushing two gurneys with two men lying on them. They hurried over to the ambulances parked there and loaded the gurneys into the back of one of them, and two guards climbed into the rear. A driver must have already been in the vehicle because it started up, geared into reverse, and pulled out, its taillights winking as it drove away.

  Robie had taken pictures of all this with his phone. He lowered the blinds, turned away from the window, and looked around the small office he was in. There was a desk with large American and U.S. Air Force flags resting in stands behind it. Gunmetal-gray file cabinets were parked against one wall. That was his target. In the digital world the military could still be counted on to also deal in good, old-fashioned paper products.

  He slid open each drawer until he found the one he wanted.

  Personnel files.

  He went through them as quickly as possible, holding a pen-light in his mouth and shining its light into the drawer to keep as much of the illumination as possible hidden. Twenty minutes later his hand closed around the file he wanted, after he made sure there were no others that fit the bill. He took pictures of each page with his phone camera, put the file back, closed up the drawer, and turned to leave. Right as someone walked up to the door and he heard a key being inserted into the lock.

  IT WAS THE SAME WOMAN. Up close, she was around thirty, with straight blond hair that fell to her shoulders, an athletic build, and resolute, focused, intelligent features. She shut the door, clicked on the light, and moved over to a desk by the window. She sat down, opened the desk drawer after unlocking it, and pulled out some files.

  As she sat at her desk she was intently focused on the documents in front of her. So much so that she didn’t notice it at first. The sound, that is. Or sounds.

  But the collective noises outside finally made her glance that way. She stiffened and then, as the sounds became more recognizable, she relaxed. She was about to turn back when the woman tensed again as she looked at the window. Now it wasn’t simply the noise that had jarred her. It was something else far more tangible. Literally staring her in the face. Her hand immediately went to the phone on the desk. She had barely picked up the receiver when she collapsed forward.

  Robie stood next to her, having come out from his hiding place behind the flags. He had on a small gas mask and was holding a bottle in his hand. The knockout spray had an amnesiac component to it. When she woke up she would remember nothing. He glanced at the window. She had no doubt seen that the blinds had been fully lowered. She might have been in the office earlier and could have even been the one to raise the blinds. She had probably been about to call security when Robie had stopped her. He darted to the window, edged the blinds aside, and peered out. There definitely appeared to be more activity out there. The sounds had lessened somewhat, but they were still there.

  He waited three beats for the noises to move away and then took his opportunity to escape.

  Outside he reversed his course and made his way to the inner security fence. Before he got there he heard the sound above and looked up. Maybe that was the source of all the ruckus going on here.

  The small jet was coming in for a landing on the runway that ran east to west behind the buildings that constituted the Air Force station. The landing gear hit the asphalt and the pilots applied the brakes along with the thrust reversers, and the small jet rolled to a stop. As it did so, several people hurried over to the plane and a golf cart drove up and parked next to the aircraft.

  Someone of importance was clearly arriving.

  For Robie, the temptation to see who was getting off the ride was too strong, overriding his good sense. But in Robie’s line of work one’s personal safety was not paramount. His focus was mission-centric. He had come to gather intel, and this alone might be well worth the clandestine visit. In fact, this might be just as important as what he had found in the file cabinet.

  He reversed course and edged along the side of a building, until he gained a sight line to the runway as the plane’s airstairs came down. Robie moved closer still as a few moments later the passengers began to deplane.

  The first person off was a tall man around fifty with broad shoulders. He was not in uniform but rather in a trim, dark suit with no tie. The second person off was a woman, also around fifty, dressed in a gray pantsuit. She clutched a soft-sided leather briefcase. The last person off was another woman, younger, dressed in a dark skirt with a matching jacket. She was checking something on her phone.

  Robie watched all of this and even managed to snap pictures using the camera built into his optics. He followed their movements as they walked over and climbed into the golf cart. As soon as they were in their seats, the vehicle zipped off. Robie took some more pictures before the cart turned and disappeared between two buildings.

  The next moment Robie was off and running.

  Because it was clear to him now that they did indeed have dogs here. And they had picked up on his presence.

  As he ran he took three items from his pocket and tossed them behind him in a triangle-shaped pattern, each about five feet apart from the other.

  He glanced back; the beasts were running free. Luckily their handlers were nowhere in sight because while Robie had a chance with the canines, he had no chance against a fired bullet. There were two of them: one a German shepherd that looked big enough and vicious enough to rip his arm off, the other a smaller Rottweiler who looked even meaner. Robie had it on good authority that the surprises he had left behind would do the trick and that even the best trained dogs would not be able to resist, even when in full chase mode. He hoped the authority was really that good.

  Both dogs skidded to a halt and attacked what he had left behind. As soon as they took a bite of what he had dropped, they wobbled and fell over. They would be super attack dogs again, but only long after Robie was gone.

  He scaled the fence twice as fast as he had coming in and successfully avoided the pressure plates.

  The fired round came out of nowhere and hit him on the lower right side of his back. The plate absorbed the kinetic energy and flung it across the face of the vest. Robie wasn’t dead, but he felt like he’d been kicked by a seriously pissed-off thousand-pound mule.

  The second fence was climbed even faster than the first. He dropped onto the other side as the searchlight began its sweep and alarms blared throughout the complex.

  He immediately hoofed it into the darkness.

  But then his life got even more complicated.

  Will Robie would have expected nothing less.

  THE CHOPPER LIFTED OFF a helipad and swiftly moved west, hot on the trail of the intruder. A searchlight sparked to life on the starboard side of the aircraft. Its beam bore down over the countryside, dramatically illuminating the flat dark land as though it were suddenly aflame.

  A few moments later the beam caught and held on its target.

  A second later the SUV roared to life and its headlights came on. Before it could drive off, though, the chopper was hovering in front of the vehicle, its .50-caliber nose cannon pointed right at the windshield. One rumble from the weapon, and the SUV would be shredded and the occupant dead in a nonsurvivable field of fire.

  Over the PA system the pilot ordered the driver to step out of the vehicle.

  The driver did not comply with this order.

  The chopper hovered there for another minute while the pilot communicated with the higher-ups on what they wanted done with the situation.

  A minute later the chopper landed, and four heavily armed and armored men climbed from it and surrounded the SUV. When their orders to come out were not obeyed,
they were about to force the issue when the SUV horn started blaring loudly. The men took a step back as the driver’s-side window started to come down. Every man pointed his assault rifle at this spot, ready to open fire the moment a weapon appeared.

  The glass hit the bottom and stopped. The blaring horn ceased. And the truck’s engine cut off. The men looked at one another before charging forward.

  They reached the side of the truck and peered inside. The front seats were empty. The back seats the same. The rear cargo area held nothing.

  The curses could be heard over all their collective comm packs when this was relayed back up the chain of command.

  * * *

  Will Robie kept the throttle on the electric scooter wound as far as it could go, as the little bike, its headlight off, moved nearly silently over the quiet roads. He was already miles away from the site of where he’d parked the truck in which he’d carried the scooter. He’d programmed in the truck starting, horn blaring, lights coming on, window coming down, and engine cutting off, then executed all of those commands through his phone app. He had watched the chopper and strike team approach the vehicle through a camera built into the grille of the truck, with the video feed going directly to his phone.

  He veered down a side road and ditched the scooter in an abandoned shed, as prearranged. He drove off in a pickup truck that had been left there for his use after stripping off his gear, underneath which he wore jeans, a corduroy shirt, and boots. A Stetson hat completed his disguise. He could be a local coming home from either a bar or a job.

  He made it back to town in three-quarters of the time it had taken him to drive out.

  He parked the truck behind the hotel where Decker and Jamison were staying.

  * * *

  Decker was sound asleep in his bed when he heard a slight noise that made him sit up.