“A test of what?”
“Of us. Maybe they wanted to see if we’d leave the goods with them anyway, without the payment. If we are who we say we are they’d know we wouldn’t stand for that. But if we were a couple of feds trying to set them up then we might, just so they’d be in possession of the evidence for a bust tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“Second, how would you describe the intellectual level of those four guys we just left?”
“I don’t know.” Danny thought for a moment. “More like sheep than shepherds.”
“Right. And do you know who’d established himself all along as the brains on their side of this operation?”
“Let me guess,” Danny sighed. “The one who wasn’t there tonight.”
“Exactly. I’m not saying those boys we just met are harmless, but they’re followers, and this guy Elmer is their leader. If they were lying about his whereabouts then he was probably back there somewhere checking us out, maybe through the scope of a deer rifle. And if he’s really up in Arizona like they said then I’ve gotta wonder what he’s doing there.”
“So what’s next?” Danny asked. “Am I done? Can you cut me loose now?”
“Not yet. I told them to e-mail me when our friend Elmer gets back in town later tonight, and we’ll have to arrange another meet-up tomorrow. Meanwhile I’ll check in with my contact, and we’ll have to play it by ear from there.”
They drove on, and as the quiet minutes passed, the glances to the rear became less frequent until finally it seemed the immediate threat of trouble was left behind. Kearns tapped on the radio and worked the dial until he found some golden oldies. He settled back into his seat, just listening to the words and music from his past, as though the particular song that was playing might somehow be a final sign that his worries were over, at least for tonight.
When the chorus arrived Kearns chimed in softly, singing to himself in a private, off-key falsetto.
Danny looked across the seat to him.
“Hey, Stuart?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I ask you something personal?”
“Sure. You can ask, but I don’t have to answer.”
“A career in the FBI is what, twenty or twenty-five years?”
“Usually, yeah. About that.”
“So don’t take this the wrong way, but shouldn’t a man your age be retired by now?”
Kearns glanced over at him, turned down the radio, and then returned his attention to his driving. “You mean, why is a sixty-three-year-old man still doing street duty, instead of running a field office or enjoying his government pension.”
“I was just wondering.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Well,” Danny said, “it’s a long drive.”
CHAPTER 27
Stuart Kearns, it turned out, had been in quite a different position a decade before. He’d worked in the top levels of counterterrorism with a man named John O’Neill, the agent who’d been one of the most persistent voices of concern over the grave danger posed by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda throughout the 1990s. Rather than being rewarded for his foresight, however, it was thought by many that his warnings, and his way of delivering them, had eventually cost O’Neill his career.
John O’Neill had seen a woeful lack of preparation for the twenty-first-century threat of stateside terrorism, and he hadn’t been shy about expressing his opinions. The people upstairs, meanwhile, didn’t appreciate all the vocal criticisms of the Bureau specifically and the government in general, especially coming from one of their own.
O’Neill had finally seen the writing on the wall after several missed promotions and a few not-so-subtle smear campaigns directed at him, and he’d left the Bureau in the late summer of his twenty-fifth year on the job. That’s when he’d taken his new position as head of security at the World Trade Center in New York City. His first day on the job was about three weeks before the day he died a hero: September 11, 2001.
Stuart Kearns’s FBI career had likewise been derailed by his outspokenness and his association with O’Neill, but he’d stubbornly chosen to try to ride out the storm rather than quitting. A bureaucracy never forgets, though, and they’d kept pushing him further and further out toward the pasture until finally, for the last several years, he’d been banished so far undercover that he sometimes wondered if anyone even remembered he was still an agent at all.
“Slow down, slow down,” Danny said.
Kearns let his foot off the gas and looked over. “What is it?”
“Do me a favor and take this exit here, right up ahead.”
At the top of the off-ramp there was little indication of anything of interest beyond advertisements for nearby food, gas, and lodging. Oh, and an eye-catching billboard for the Pussycat Ranch.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kearns said.
“We’ve had a rough night, Stuart, and I’d like to have a beer.”
“I’ve got beer at home.”
“A beer in a can in a house trailer with another dude and a beer in a Nevada brothel are two totally different things, and right now I need the second one.”
Surprisingly enough, Kearns didn’t put up a fight. He followed the signs along the circuitous route to the place without complaining, and pulled up into a parking spot near the end of the lot in front.
Danny got out of the van, straightened his clothes, and looked back. “Aren’t you coming in?”
“No, I don’t think so. Fake or not, I’m not going to leave an atomic bomb unattended in the parking lot of a roadhouse.”
“Okay, your loss. Can you spot me a hundred until payday?”
“I don’t have a hundred.” Kearns took out his wallet, removed a bill, and handed it to Danny through the open door. “I’ve got twenty. I’m going to try to make a phone call while I’m waiting out here, but don’t take all night. We’re getting up early in the morning.”
“With twenty dollars I doubt if I’ll be ten minutes.”
“And I know I don’t have to tell you to watch what you say and who you say it to,” Kearns said. “Just have your drink and come back out. Don’t make me come in there after you.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Inside, he’d barely taken a seat at the bar and placed his order when one of the more fetching young ladies of the evening caught his eye and invited herself over.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“That’s a loaded question in a place like this, isn’t it?”
She frowned a bit and looked at him a little closer. “Do I know you, mister?”
The bartender had returned with his beer, taken his twenty, and left a ten-dollar bill in its place. Danny picked up his glass and his change and took the woman’s hand.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“My name’s Tiffany.” Her eyes lit up suddenly. “You’re that guy,” she whispered, “on the Internet, in that video.”
“I am indeed,” Danny said. He leaned in a little closer. “And Tiffany, I need for you to do me a little favor.”
In her room in back he gave his new friend an autograph and his last ten dollars, and that bought him five minutes alone with her cell phone.
As he composed the text message to Molly Ross he began to realize how little intelligence he actually had to pass along. He knew the code name of this operation he’d become involved in; he’d seen it on the paperwork they’d made him sign upon his release from jail. He knew when it was going down, and where. And he knew something was going wrong, and that the downward slide might be just beginning.
Outside at the bar the television had been showing the news, and in the crawl along the bottom he’d seen that over the weekend the national terrorism threat level had been raised to orange, the last step before the highest. Maybe that was related to this thing with Kearns, maybe not. All he could do was tell her to try to keep everyone in their movement well clear of the area, and hope for the best.
He checked the message one last time, and hit send.
molly -
spread the word --- stay away from las vegas monday
FBI sting op --> * exigent *
be safe
xoxo
db
CHAPTER 28
A small fragment of his awareness saw everything clearly from a mute corner of his mind, but that part had given up trying to rouse the rest of him. Noah still lay where Molly had left him, not exactly asleep but a long way from consciousness.
He heard a faraway pounding and muffled shouts coming from somewhere outside the churning darkness in his head. These sounds didn’t raise an alarm; they only blended themselves smoothly into his bad dream.
His nightmares had grown infrequent as he’d gotten older, but they’d always been the same. No slow-motion chases, shambling zombies, or yellow eyes peering from an open closet door; the running theme of his nocturnal terrors was nothing so elaborate. In every one he was simply trapped, always held by something crushing and inescapable as his life slowly drained away. Buried alive in a tight pine coffin, pinned and smothering beneath a pillow pressed to his face by powerful hands, caught under the crush of an avalanche, terrified and helpless and knowing he’d already begun to die.
This time it was deep water. He could see daylight glinting off the waves high above; all the air he needed was there, but it was much too far away. As he tried to swim up every stroke of his arms only sent him farther downward, until at last some primitive instinct took over and demanded that he inhale. Salt water rushed into his straining lungs, heaved out, and poured in again, burning like acid.
This was the part where he knew he had to wake up, because if he didn’t he was sure the dream would kill him. But it wouldn’t let him go.
There was a boom, a clattering much louder than the earlier sounds, then a grip on his shoulders, someone shaking him. He struggled against the pressure and somehow forced his eyes open.
Black things were crawling across the floor and up the walls, across his arms, and over the face of the man above him. He flailed at them and lost his balance, rolling to the floor and hitting it hard. People ran past, guns drawn and shouting. One older woman knelt next to him and opened the bag she’d set down beside her. She touched his face, said his name as though it was a question, and held open one of his eyes with the pad of her thumb. A hot white light shone in, so bright it stung, and he tried to pull away.
“Easy,” the woman said, and she made a motion to someone behind him.
Others came, and Noah felt the buttons of his shirt being undone, hands moving over him as though they were feeling for something, and then a pain and a tearing sound, like a patch of carpet tape had been ripped from his upper chest near the shoulder. One of his sleeves was pulled up and something cold and wet rubbed against the vein at the bend of his elbow.
“You might feel a little pinch,” the woman said.
He looked down and watched the gradual pierce of a hypodermic needle, but felt only a distant pressure and then a chill trickling up the vessel as the plunger was pushed to its stop. The room had begun a slow spin with him at its center.
The doctor snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Noah? Can you tell me what year it is?”
“Where am I?”
“You’re safe. What’s your mother’s maiden name, do you know that?” She had a stethoscope to his chest, and her attention was on the face of her wristwatch.
“Wilson. Jaime Wilson.” He felt his head beginning to clear. A gradual, unnatural onset of wide-awakeness was taking hold, likely brought on by whatever had been in that injection. A pounding set in at his temple, and he pushed away the hands that were supporting him as he sat up on his own.
“And what day is today?”
“I got here on Saturday night.” A few others had gathered around and he noticed them exchanging a look when they heard this answer. “What happened? How long have I been out?”
“It’s Monday, about noon,” the woman said. She snapped off her gloves and returned her things to the medical kit, then stood and turned to one of the men. “I’ll take him now. Three of you come with me and the rest should finish up here, then be sure to call in.”
Monday, about noon; he’d been dead to the world for forty hours. Noah tried his best to let that sink in as two of the men helped him to his feet. They stayed close, as though half expecting him to collapse immediately if he tried to walk on his own.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
The woman looked at him, and her demeanor had noticeably chilled. It’s a thing with some doctors; the instant you’re well they don’t see much use in courtesy.
“Your father wants to see you,” she said.
CHAPTER 29
“What time zone is Nevada?” Danny called out toward the trailer’s kitchenette. His watch was a Rolex knockoff and it wasn’t easy to reset, so whenever he was traveling he always put off messing with it for as long as possible. This, however, was shaping up to be a day when he’d need to know the time.
“Pacific Standard, same as L.A.,” Agent Kearns shouted back. “It’s about twenty-five after eight.”
They’d both overslept a bit and now there was a rush to get on the road. To add to the tension Kearns had said he’d been unable to reach his FBI contact the night before, and this morning he’d received a rather cryptic e-mail from their new terrorist brethren.
The message had been from the missing man, the one named Elmer. There was to be another meeting this afternoon, the real meeting this time, at which the weapon would be exchanged for the money, and some final brainstorming would take place on the eve of tomorrow’s planned bombing in downtown Las Vegas. The rendezvous was set for 5 p.m., out somewhere in the desert so far from civilization that only a latitude and longitude were provided as a guide to get there.
Between the two of them Danny was more capable on the computer, so it had been entrusted to him to plan the route to this remote location through a visit to MapQuest. While Kearns was in the bathroom Danny had logged on to his favorite anonymous e-mailing site and fired off a quick text update to his staff in Chicago, with a copy to Molly and a short list of other trusted compatriots:
* FYI ONLY DO NOT FORWARD DELETE AFTER READING *
Big mtg today, Monday PM, southern
Nevada. If you don’t hear from me by
Wednesday I’m probably dead*, and this is
where to hunt for the body:
Lat 37°39’54.35”N Long 116°56’31.48“W
> S T A Y A W A Y from Nevada TFN <
* I wish I was kidding
The message was safely gone, the browser history deleted, and the map to the meeting location printed out and ready by the time Kearns returned to the room.
When the artificial bomb was loaded into the van again Danny sat in the shotgun seat and waited, warming his hands around a cup of instant coffee as the engine idled. An eight-hour drive was ahead, with an unknown outcome waiting at the end of it, but all things considered, he felt unusually calm.
Kearns appeared a minute or so later, but when he was halfway out to the vehicle he stopped and lightly smacked himself on the forehead as though something important had almost slipped his mind. He turned back and hurried to the front door of the trailer, unlocked it and held it open, called inside, and gestured for half a minute until that moth-eaten cat appeared and scampered past him out into the barren yard. Then Agent Kearns knelt and filled an inverted hubcap with water from the hose and set it carefully near the stairs, in a spot where it would stay cool in the shade for most of the day.
This was a thing any person might do if they owned a pet and knew they’d be away on a trip until late tomorrow. But, and it was hard just then to put his finger on precisely why, it certainly seemed to Danny like this man thought he might be going away for an awful lot longer than that.
CHAPTER 30
After they’d delivered him to 500 Fifth Avenue Noah’s escorts waited outside his suite as
he took a quick shower and then changed into the neatly folded set of fresh clothes his secretary had arranged for him. The entourage then proceeded with him across the twenty-first floor to the far corner office.
Arthur Gardner was there behind his desk, looking thoughtful and sober as a judge, long fingers knit together, slightly reclined and contemplating in his favorite leather chair.
Charlie Nelan was standing by the window. He looked over, then shook his head almost imperceptibly as Noah met his eyes. Charlie seemed worn-out and wired at the same time, his wrinkled shirt undone at the collar, sleeves rolled up to the forearms, no necktie. This was far from the lawyer’s polished public face; it was the look of a man who’d been awakened from a sound sleep to help fight a five-alarm fire.
The doctor had given Noah an unlabeled prescription bottle that contained a number of small white pills. It was a low-dose oral variation of the drug in the shot he’d received earlier, meant to counteract the lingering effects of that anesthetic patch she’d peeled off his chest when they found him. He’d taken one of the pills already, and it helped, but even with the aid of the drug he still felt like he’d just stepped off the Tilt-A-Whirl. The bottle rattled in his pocket as he sat in a chair that was pulled up for him, across the wide desk from his father.
The boss of the firm’s security service, an ex-mercenary hard guy named Warren Landers, consulted for a few moments with his four employees who’d brought Noah in. There’d been only a few occasions in the past when Noah had come in close contact with this man but it hadn’t taken very long to get the intended impression. Landers was the bully in the schoolyard who’d grown up and found himself an executive job where he could dress up and get paid for doing what he still loved to do. There was always an undertone when he spoke, a smirk in his eyes as if something about you was the punch line of a running joke he was telling in his head.
At a slight wave from Arthur Gardner the four underlings left the room and Mr. Landers walked over and stood next to the desk. With everyone facing his chair Noah got the feeling it was his turn to say something, but he was lost as to what it should be.