Walk the Wire

by David Baldacci

  Okay, the shitshow was turning into maybe his last stand.

  He dropped the empty sub gun, pulled his pistol, knelt down, and took aim. He might very well get two of them before the other two got him. At this precise moment in time that might be as near to perfection as was possible.

  He sighted through the scope on his Picatinny rail, as they were no doubt doing with him. He prepared himself mentally for the impact of the rounds that would end his life.

  Okay, Robie, it’s been a good run, but all good runs have to come to an end.

  The next instant one man dropped, then a second.

  Then a third. They were all head shots, and bits of skull, flesh, and eruptions of blood covered the ground around the men as they went down.

  The shots were so rapid and so precise that they almost seemed to blend together into one round fired.

  The thing was, Robie had not pulled the trigger on his weapon.

  As the last man stopped and gazed around, wondering where the hell the shots were coming from, the next round pierced his skull and blew out the back of his head.

  He fell to the North Dakota soil without any last words.

  Robie rose from the ground and looked around, his pistol at the ready. Just because someone had taken out his enemies didn’t mean they were necessarily his ally.

  He whirled when he heard the sounds of methodical footsteps coming across the road. He pointed his gun at the interloper.

  When the person came close enough for him to see, Robie was stunned for one of the very few times in his life. He lowered his weapon.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Dressed all in black, Jessica Reel lowered her customized sniper rifle with her favorite scope attached. She looked him up and down, then surveyed the field of carnage behind them.

  Gazing back at him she said, “What else? Saving your ass.”

  “I WANT TO KNOW what the hell is going on,” exclaimed Joe Kelly.

  It was the next day, and he was standing next to Decker and Jamison, as they surveyed the grounds in front of the abandoned apartment building. It was strewn with dead bodies with sheets over them. Hundreds of yellow markers, denoting found shell casings and bullets, covered the ground.

  “Looks like quite a gun battle went on,” observed Decker slowly.

  “That I can see,” barked Kelly. “What I want to know is why.”

  “How should we know?” replied Decker calmly.

  “Nothing like this ever happened before you guys showed up,” replied Kelly testily.

  “Doesn’t mean it’s cause and effect,” pointed out Decker.

  “Have you identified any of the bodies?” asked Jamison.

  “None have ID or any other traceable items. And they don’t look American to me, at least most of them don’t.”

  Decker glanced at Jamison and said to Kelly, “Do you have photos of the dead?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I’d like to see them. Something might pop.”

  Kelly looked at him warily and then said, “I’ll get them. Don’t go away.”

  As soon as he moved off, Jamison said, “This is the building where Robie brought us to meet his boss.”

  “I’m well aware of that.”

  “Do you think Robie—?”

  “That’s why I want to see the photos.”

  Jamison gazed around. “It looks like a war zone.”

  Decker nodded. “Kelly and his team have searched the building and it’s empty, but there are signs out back of another gunfight and a rope dangling from a balcony.”

  “Have you tried to call Robie on that phone he left you?”

  “To tell the truth, I’m afraid to try.”

  “You’ll know soon enough. Here comes Kelly.”

  Kelly rejoined them and handed over an iPad on which were loaded photos of all the dead men. It took about a minute to go through them. Decker and Jamison exchanged a relieved glance when they saw that Robie was not among the pictures.

  “I don’t recognize any of these guys, but like you said, most of them seem foreign. Eastern Europe, the Middle East. A couple of Asians.”

  Kelly took the iPad back. “It’s a hodgepodge all right.”

  “Have you spoken with Mark Sumter?” asked Decker.

  “Sumter, why?”

  “Well, he heads up the military presence here. This might be something the Pentagon wants to know about.”

  “Okay. But it’s not like the people under Sumter came here and had a pitched battle and left all these dead guys.”

  “Well, you won’t know for sure till you ask him,” retorted Decker. “The government likes its secrets.”

  Kelly shook his head. “It’ll take us weeks to process this scene. You think the Bureau will send up more agents now?”

  “Maybe,” said Decker. “If we can show there’s a terrorist angle to this.”

  “Terrorists!” exclaimed Kelly. “What would they be doing in North Dakota?”

  “Well, that’s our job to figure out.”

  They left Kelly and walked back to their SUV.

  “You going to call Robie? I mean, he has to be involved in this.”

  “The probabilities lie there.”

  “But do you think he killed all those men? I mean, that seems impossible.”

  “Nothing about that guy seems impossible to me.”

  As they reached their vehicle Decker’s phone buzzed.

  “It’s Harper Brown,” he said, checking the screen.

  “Hopefully, she has some news for us.”

  Decker answered the phone and Harper Brown, their friend at the DIA, said, “What the hell are you mixed up in out there, Decker?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me. And how’s Melvin?”

  Melvin Mars was one of Decker’s best friends. A former college football star convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Texas, Decker had proved his innocence. Mars and Brown were now dating.

  “He’s great. He sends his best and told me to tell you that if you need him as a bodyguard again, don’t hesitate to call.”

  “I don’t think I want him anywhere near this place. Besides, I think I have a pretty good bodyguard already.”

  “Don’t let Alex hear you call her a bodyguard.”

  “I wasn’t talking about her. So what do you have for us?”

  “I’m thinking time is of the essence?”

  “Your thinking is spot-on.”

  “First things first, anyone I could find with firsthand knowledge of the Douglas S. George Defense Complex provided nothing helpful. It’s been under Air Force control since the Korean War era when it was built.”

  “Has it been a radar array looking for missiles all that time?”

  Strangely, she didn’t answer right away. “Well, it’s hard to tell. From what I could find out, it didn’t come online as an eye in the sky until the late sixties, well into the Cold War.”

  “The Korean War was in the early fifties. What was it used for back then?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t find out.”

  “How is that possible? Don’t you have every security clearance they give out?”

  “I thought I did, until I started asking questions about the place, particularly what it was doing back in the fifties. There I ran into a stone wall.”

  “I understand there’s another eye in the sky around here.”

  “That’s the other funny thing. The Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex is on the eastern side of the state and is part of the Twenty-First Space Wing, and designated Cavalier Air Force Station. It’s near Grand Forks, North Dakota, and was deactivated in 1976, but it has a PARCS radar array and keeps watch out for incoming missiles and also tracks objects in space.”

  “Which was how the commanding officer at the facility here described what they do. A pair of eyes in North Dakota? Isn’t that a bit of overkill, especially considering the Cold War is long dead?”

  “You would think, Decker, you would
think.” She paused. “What do you believe is going on up there?”

  “I think the answer to that would scare the crap out of even somebody like you.”

  “THINGS ARE ACCELERATING,” said Blue Man.

  He, Robie, and Reel were sitting in Reel’s black SUV on a quiet road about a mile outside of London. In the distance they could see oil rigs and crews pecking at the earth with drill bits and detonation guns.

  “The police are all over the property,” noted Robie.

  “Well, there was no way we had the resources to clean up something like that. But that was a big loss for them, thanks to you.”

  Robie glanced at Reel. “Thanks to me and Jess. I thought you were on the other side of the world on assignment.”

  “I was.” Reel was a female version of Robie, tall, lean, rock hard, with the calm and resolute features of a fighter pilot. “But then I got the call to come to wonderful North Dakota, where there were pressing matters that needed my attention.”

  “You were following me?” said Robie, his features troubled.

  “I knew your itinerary, otherwise I would not have been able to. Don’t worry, you’re not losing a step.”

  “Your timing was impeccable, I understand,” noted Blue Man.

  “I’m six feet under if she was a second later,” added Robie. “Jess and I checked some of the bodies out before we left the scene.”

  “They weren’t members of our military,” said Reel. “They weren’t even from this country.”

  “Foreigners on domestic soil,” murmured Blue Man.

  “Which begs the question of why,” said Reel.

  Robie said, “Decker told us about the farmer who saw the man trying to escape. Speaking gibberish?”

  “A foreign language, possibly Arabic or perhaps Farsi. I believe Mr. Decker would have already come to a similar conclusion.”

  “So it’s a prison, then,” said Robie.

  Reel interjected, “It’s no secret that some of the prisoners at Gitmo have been transferred to federal prisons across the country. But that Air Force facility is not a prison, at least not that anyone’s told me.”

  “Perhaps they haven’t told anyone,” suggested Blue Man.

  “What’s going on with Gitmo now?” asked Robie.

  “Past administrations either tried to keep it open or shut it down. The latter turned out to be harder than it looked. It now costs about thirteen million dollars per prisoner. Currently, there are roughly one hundred prisoners there.”

  “So one point three billion bucks to house them,” said Reel.

  “A steep price,” added Blue Man. “But no one seems to know what to do about it.”

  “So you think they transferred some of them up here?” said Robie. “Why?”

  “I didn’t say that,” said Blue Man. “These might be new prisoners. We’re still fighting over there, of course. Taliban, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, even Houthian rebels and Iranian operatives, and other groups that are not as well known.”

  “So that Air Force station might now be Gitmo Two?” asked Reel.

  “And maybe doing things to prisoners there that are no longer allowed at Gitmo One,” mused Blue Man.

  “Meaning torture?”

  “I used to talk the company line and say, instead, ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ but things like waterboarding, well, we need to call them what they are.”

  “How in the world could something like that get authorized?” said Reel. “And at a military facility? The DoD has always been against that sort of thing. It violates the Geneva Conventions and opens up American soldiers held as prisoners to the same kind of treatment.”

  “It might not have been authorized, at least not through the proper channels,” said Blue Man. “I think the politicians have learned their lesson on that one.”

  “Which brings us to this,” said Robie. He took out a thumb drive and inserted it into the USB port on his laptop. He brought up the photos he had taken the previous night and turned it toward Blue Man.

  “This guy was meeting with Sumter, and whatever they’re doing is definitely not on the up-and-up.”

  Blue Man looked at the pictures of the older man.

  “Recognize him?” asked Reel.

  Blue Man nodded. “Patrick McIntosh, a former, obscure congressman who did little during his time in DC. He has since made his mark, first as the head of a think tank, and now as a formidable lobbyist and kingmaker with a Rolodex that would rival anyone else’s, and a desire to make as much money as possible by any means possible. He is supremely well connected in all the corridors of power that matter.”

  “Never heard of him,” said Robie. Reel nodded in agreement.

  “Which he would be delighted to hear. McIntosh does what he does from the shadows. The only time he seeks the limelight is when it suits him, usually accepting some honor for philanthropy that he performs only to keep in the good company of people he needs to further his own goals.”

  “You sound like you know him well,” said Robie.

  “I’ve had my run-ins with him. I found him prepared, methodical, ruthless, shockingly lacking in empathy, and not above lying when it advantaged him in some way. Given that, I have always been surprised he didn’t rise higher in government.”

  Robie passed Blue Man the recorder he had used to tape the conversation of the two men. “You need to hear this.”

  Blue Man turned on the recorder and listened to the conversation with great interest.

  When it was done, he turned the recorder off and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, Robie said, “What will you do with that?”

  “I will do what needs to be done. And I will move swiftly. If they are keeping a prison over there, we need to nip this in the bud as quickly and quietly as possible.”

  “You need any help from us on that?”

  He held up the recorder. “You’ve given me all I need.”

  Reel folded her arms over her chest and gave Blue Man a stern look. “And what’s our next move?”

  “The two of you will shadow Decker and Jamison. I’ll let you know when you can fill them in on what you know and have them reciprocate. Based on our comingled intelligence, we can hopefully then map out a strategy going forward.”

  “Do you think it wise to share what we know with them?” said Reel, looking surprised.

  Robie said, “We can trust them.”

  “And since you saved Mr. Decker’s life, I would think that he will believe he can trust you,” said Blue Man. “And he can, up to a point.”

  “You see our agendas misaligning at some point?” queried Robie.

  “I have seen that happen before, so I can’t say it won’t happen now. We simply need to see how it plays out.”

  “When do you want us to meet with them?”

  “Now,” said Blue Man. “Whatever is being planned up here has a short fuse. I sense we have no time to waste. And it’s not just this prison business. There’s something else going on here that is far worse. A ‘ticking time bomb’ reference does not provide for either restful sleep or dalliance. Now, drive me to the airstrip. I need to get back to DC as quickly as possible. I have many things to arrange and not much time to do so. And then, I have a meeting to attend.”

  Reel put the SUV in gear and they drove off.

  “AMOS DECKER? REX MANNERS. Heard you wanted a line on an AWOL named Ben Purdy.”

  Decker had answered the call while sitting in his hotel room the next day.

  “That’s right, Rex, thanks for getting back to me. What do you have?”

  “A name and an address. Beverly Purdy. She lives in Montana, a few hours from the border with North Dakota, which I understand is where you are now.”

  “That’s right.”

  Manners gave him the address. “Beverly Purdy is the mom. She’s a widow, and Ben is her only kid. She lives on a farm, raises some crops and cattle. I don’t know if Purdy is there or not, but it seemed like a good place for you to start.”


  “I appreciate the assist. Be sure to email me a bill. I can give you my address.”

  “Don’t worry about it. PIs do each other favors. You’ll be able to return it one day. Good luck.”

  Manners clicked off, and Decker put his phone away. He called Jamison and filled her in. When they Googled the location of Purdy’s farm, they found it was about five hours from London.

  “Should we grab Kelly?” asked Jamison.

  “I don’t want to involve him in something that might come back to haunt him. There may come a time when we have to tell him, but now is not that time.”

  They met up downstairs and drove out of town heading west.

  “Did you contact Robie?”

  “Not yet. I was going to when the PI called. Let’s check out Purdy and then we can hook up with Robie when we get back.”

  The long drive seemed longer than it was because there was nothing to see except landscape that never changed.

  “I’ve never been in a car this long without seeing another car,” observed Jamison as she drove along. “And I grew up in Indiana.”

  “This is Big Sky country.”

  Jamison looked out the window. “You got that right. You don’t get this sort of impression in DC or New York.”

  Decker glanced at her wrist, where she had tatted Iron Butterfly. “You said your mother got you onto that band when you were a kid. After they re-formed.”

  She smirked. “Wow, good memory.”

  “Still listen to their music?”

  “I’ve moved on to Janis Joplin, and the Doors.”

  He glanced at her hand. “When I first met you, I noticed the slight indentation on your ring finger from when you were married before.”

  She glanced sharply at him. “I’ve never known you to make small talk. What gives?”

  “Maybe I’m evolving.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’ve never really spoken about your ex. You just told me you were married for two years and three months, then things went sideways. He wasn’t the man you thought he was and maybe you weren’t the woman he thought you were.”

  She frowned. “Sometimes your perfect recall is really irritating.”