Текст книги "Gideon's War / Hard Target"

Автор книги: Howard Gordon

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Gideon's War and Hard Target

The world was a mess, and if the politicians weren’t...

What people would never appreciate, though, was how truly difficult, nearly impossible, it had been to pull off. So many details, so many tiny things to sort out, think through, nail down. Even a simple thing like burying a bunch of people in northern Idaho, when the temperature had been below freezing for five and a half weeks. The dirt was frozen six inches down into the ground. Even with a tractor, it took a long time to dig a large enough hole. And then he had to drag and push the bodies, now stiff with rigor mortis. And when he pushed the dirt over the bodies, the bodies rolled around and didn’t want to settle beneath the earth.

As he climbed off the tractor he saw that he had messed up. A slim hand stuck up out of the ground. One of the bodies must have rolled over and gotten pushed up to the surface. He climbed back on the tractor, turned the key.

The tractor wouldn’t start. There had been a loose wire in the tractor for weeks. Sometimes it started in seconds, sometimes it took twenty minutes. Right now he didn’t have twenty minutes.

His phone rang.

“What’s the holdup?” Mr. Wilmot said. “The plane is standing by. Wheels up in an hour.”

“I’m on my way,” Collier said.

He jumped off the tractor, walked over to the hand. He felt sure that it was Amalie’s hand—slim, long-fingered, delicate. He was about to cover it with dirt when he was seized by an urge he couldn’t overcome. For the umpteenth time he looked around to make sure no one was watching him. Then he got on his hands and knees and sniffed the hand. It had no distinct smell. He hesitated, then his tongue darted out and he licked one of the fingers. It had a mild earthy taste, like a lightly salted mushroom. He felt pleased and embarrassed at the same time. He did not want to be caught at this by Mr. Wilmot.

He stood, kicked a few clods of frozen black dirt around the hand. It would have been better to retrieve a shovel from the building and cover the hand completely with dirt. But the ground he had replaced was already frozen solid. Even if he got the shovel, it could take him half an hour to chop enough dirt free to cover the hand.

No, it wasn’t worth the effort. Nobody would be out here for weeks. And by then it would be too late.

Evan rolled his wheelchair out into the yard as John Collier and his father loaded their bags into the Cadillac. The cold was bracing, and Evan watched the men huff with their effort. In addition to their suitcases, Collier had loaded in a sort of wheeled caddy containing two shiny canisters. The canisters resembled propane tanks but were slightly taller. Stenciled on the side of each one were red letters reading: R410A REFRIGERANT.

Wilmot spotted Evan and walked toward him. “Well, we’re about to head off.”

“So I see,” Evan said. “You never really told me where you were going.”

“DC,” Wilmot said. “We’re making a presentation to the DOE, meeting with Senator Elbert, Congressman Dade, a couple of other folks. Frankly we’ve reached a point where the ethanol project is just not going to make economic sense without some legislative help.”

Evan nodded but said nothing.

“Margie will take care of you while we’re gone,” his father said.

“I’ll be fine,” said Evan.

“I’ve given her specific instructions.”

His father didn’t move but simply continued to look down at Evan. His face, usually so focused and guarded, seemed momentarily vulnerable and open.

Then he smiled, leaned over, and wrapped his arms around Evan. He squeezed Evan very hard, not letting go for a long time. When finally he did let go and straightened up, Evan was shocked to see tears in the old man’s eyes.

“You’re a good son and a fine man,” Wilmot said. “And I want you to know, I love you very much.”

Taken aback by his father’s uncharacteristic display of affection, Evan asked, “You okay, Dad?”

“I’m fine. Better than I’ve been in a long time.” Evan searched his father’s face for clues, trying to connect this sudden emotion with whatever strange secret he and Collier were keeping. Wilmot continued: “For the longest time I felt so angry about what had been taken from you. I felt like it was my own damn legs that were gone, my own face . . .” He trailed off, a sudden swell of emotion threatening his composure. “But now I’ve made my peace with it. You and me—in our own ways we’re all soldiers fighting for a better future. In our own ways, we all have been called to make our sacrifices.”

“Green energy,” Evan said, pointing at the canisters that Collier was still wrestling into the Cadillac. “Rock on, man.”

His father’s jaw clenched for a moment. “Just know that I love you, that’s all.” Then he turned and walked back to join John Collier at the Cadillac.

He said something roughly to Collier, who slammed the trunk shut. Collier glanced momentarily at Evan, a peevish, resentful expression on his face. Then the two men climbed in the car and drove away.

Evan watched until the car disappeared. Although he didn’t quite know why, he felt a rising dread and fear.

“Everything’s squared away, right?” Wilmot said. “The women are taken care of?”

“It’s done,” Collier said peevishly. He was tired of Wilmot hounding him all the time.

Wilmot stared impassively out the windshield, powering the big car just fast enough that Collier could feel it sliding a little in the snowy turns.

“I don’t have to tell you what that shit will do if we crash into a tree,” Collier said.

Wilmot said nothing. He flipped on the radio, tuned it to the news talk station in Coeur d’Alene.

“In t#82 Q8220;In today’s top story,” the man said. “The standoff in West Virginia appears to be over. Three FBI men are dead, and nine members of the so-called Seventh West Virginia (True) Militia are dead. According to FBI Deputy Director Raymond Dahlgren, two remaining suspects are wanted for questioning—the leader of the militia group, self-appointed Colonel James G. Verhoven, and his wife Lorene Taylor Verhoven.”

“Jesus,” Collier said. He could feel his breathing go shallow and rapid. “Oh, Jesus. What are we going to do?”

“Now’s not the time to panic,” Wilmot said calmly. “Call the emergency number, see if you can raise him.”

Collier took a deep breath. Just the sound of Wilmot’s voice calmed him.

“Right, right. Sorry. I’ll call him on a burner.”

He reached into his briefcase, pulled out one of the disposable cell phones they had reserved specifically for calling Verhoven, and punched in the number.

“No answer,” he said, his voice going high and nervous. “What are we going to do if Verhoven can’t execute?”

“Calm down,” Wilmot said, his deep voice as serene and certain as if he were talking about the weather. “If the Feds had found out anything from them, there’d be guys in black fast-roping out of choppers onto our heads. We’re fine.”

“Yes, sir.” Collier took a breath and closed his eyes, focusing on the thousands of details he’d committed to memory—air-flow calculations, duct schematics—until slowly his pulse returned to normal.

25

SOUTHERN WEST VIRGINIA

Tillman Davis wound through the mountains for twenty miles, heading south toward Virginia. He wasn’t sure where Verhoven wanted to go, but he knew they needed to put some distance between themselves and the compound before showing their faces.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

Finally he pulled into an old gas station, parking the...

“How’s she doing?” Tillman said.

Verhoven’s face was grim. He shook his head.

“I was cross-trained as a medical corpsman,” Tillman said. “We need to get her to a safe place. A hotel room would probably be best. I can do a few things for her, hopefully keep her stable.”

Verhoven wiped his forehead. “I need to make a phone call,” he said. “Keep her comfortable, okay?”

Tillman tried to help Lorene from the bed of the trailer into the truck. She was pale and shaking, too weak to walk, so he had to pick her up and set her inside the truck.

As he got her situated, he tried to listen to the conversation Verhoven was having on the phone. But Verhoven had walked out of earshot to a nearby Dumpster.

Verhoven thumbed thedicccccc T‡ number he had committed to memory on one of the burners he was carrying. Wilmot answered after the first ring. Although he kept his voice even, it was pitched with tension.

“Where are you?”

“Twenty miles from my place,” Verhoven said.

“It’s all over the damn news. Did this have something to do with that snitch, Mixon?”

“Maybe,” Verhoven said. “But like I told John, he didn’t know any concrete details. And whatever little he did know, he never got to pass on to the Feds.”

“Then we’re fine.”

“Not exactly. Lorene’s been shot.”

“How bad?”

“Bad enough that she may not be able to execute the operation.”

There was a long silence. “Then you’ll have to do it alone.”

“Actually, there may be another way.”

“Another way?”

Verhoven glanced over his shoulder. Lorene had been skeptical about Tillman at first. She said it had seemed awfully convenient for a guy who’d been as standoffish as Tillman suddenly to show up, all eager beaver at such a crucial time. But no FBI plant would have done what he’d done. According to Lorene, he’d killed two FBI men. Not to mention he’d saved her life.

“I have a man with me,” Verhoven said. “A very special man.”

“Absolutely not,” Wilmot said harshly.

“He can get me the weapons and breaching charges I need for the operation. And he’s trained to use them.” Verhoven glanced toward the truck. Tillman Davis was eyeing him, so he quickly looked away. He didn’t want the guy getting a read on his face.

“I said no,” Mr. Wilmot said.

“Mr. Wilmot—”

“Jim, listen to me very carefully. This operation has been planned down to the last detail. There’s no redo. Everybody involved has been vetted with extreme care. We can’t just let some random person jump into the middle of this thing.”

“Mr. Wilmot, with all due respect, he’s not some random person—”

“Kill him, Jim.”

“Mr. Wilmot.”

“I said, kill him. And do it now.”

Jim Verhoven respected Wilmot enormously. It had taken a man of extraordinary vision and courage to conceive an operation this bold and this complex. But Verhoven was a man who’d grown accustomed to giving orders, not taking them.

“Do it now, Jim.”

The phone went dead in Verhoven’s hand.

The moment Tillman saw Verhoven’s face, he knew exactly what Verhoven had been told to do. l h ad to do. He reached for his Glock just before Verhoven reached for his.

Verhoven feigned surprise. “What are you doing?” he asked as Tillman steadied the gun on him.

“I saw your face. Whoever you were talking to told you to kill me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Tillman measured Verhoven’s expression. The man was clearly lying, but killing him or locking him down for the police would blow any chance of discovering his plans. But maybe there was another way to play this. It was a risky proposition—and if he miscalculated, he would pay for it with his life—but if he wanted to stop the attack from happening, it was his only real option. Tillman decided to take the chance.

He handed his Glock to Verhoven.

“If you’re going to do it, do it now. Make it fast.”

Verhoven’s face tightened, but he said nothing.

Tillman found himself feeling strangely at peace. He didn’t want to die, but if he did, he felt okay with it. He would be sacrificing his life for something larger than himself and go out in a blaze of private glory. Or maybe he just wanted to end it all—the relentless shame and boredom he carried around his neck like twin millstones. Whatever it was, he finally felt liberated from the previous two years of purgatory in which he’d been living, the neither-here-nor-there murkiness he’d been slogging through for so long.

“Come on, dammit,” Tillman said. His pulse hammered in his ears, and a roaring sound echoed through his head. “Whatever you’ve got planned is bigger than either of us. I’m willing to die if it’ll make this cesspool a little better.” Tillman was surprised by how convincing he sounded.

Verhoven smiled fondly at him and pushed the gun back toward Tillman. “The reason this place is a cesspool is precisely because we don’t have enough men like you.” When Tillman made no move to take his gun back, Verhoven slid the Glock into the holster on Tillman’s belt. “I was never going to kill you, Tillman. We need you. We need you more than you’ve ever been needed in your life.”

Their eyes met. Verhoven seemed to be in the grip of powerful emotions.

“All right then,” Tillman said. “Let’s find someplace I can help your wife.”

They got back in the truck. Lorene was still sleeping, oblivious to the drama that had just played out between Tillman and her husband.

They drove for another hour before reaching the town of Weston, not far from the Virginia border. Tillman withdrew four hundred dollars from an ATM machine. He then drove on to Buckhannon, where he rented a room in the Friendly Tyme Motel on US 33 under the name Doug Rogers, paying for one night in cash. After installing Lorene and Verhoven in the room, he drove to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where he stole three bags of plasma, an IV setup, a tube of bacitracin, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a box of large gauze pads, and a 1993 Honda Accord.

By noon, Lorene’s wounds were cleaned and dressed and she had two pints of fluid in her. Her color had improved, and she had stopped shaking.

“Now,” Tillman said as he threw the bloody gauze into the wastebasket, “it’s time to stop playing footsie. What the hell are we doing here?”

Verhoven looked evasive. “I don’t know the details of the main attack itself. We’re not part of that. Our mission is a support operation.”

“Okay, but what’s our target? If I’m going to help you and maybe get myself killed in the process, I deserve to know what I’m getting into, don’t you think?”

Verhoven met Tillman’s gaze but didn’t answer.

“For godsake, Jim!” Lorene said softly. “He saved my life. Yours, too, for that matter. Either we trust him or we don’t.”

Verhoven nodded but still hesitated for a moment. “It’s the State of the Union address,” he said finally. “We’re going to decapitate the entire top tier of the US government. We’re going to kill them all.”

26

I-79, NEAR THE VIRGINIA BORDER

Gideon’s encrypted cell phone rang as he was heading north on Interstate 79, cruise control set four miles above the speed limit.

“Do you have any clue just how deep in the shit you are right now?” It was Nancy on the line. “You’re wanted for questioning as a person of interest in connection with the shoot-out at Verhoven’s compound.”

“‘Person of interest’? What does that even mean?”

“It means Dahlgren’s already spinning this to try to make it look like it’s your fault. I suspect he’s even trumping something up so that he can arrest you.”

“He’s the one who provoked the situation.”

“Were you there?”

“I’m not sure I should answer that, given what you just said.”

“You’re not the only one who’s in trouble. He tracked the equipment I gave you, which probably gives him some sort of unauthorized-use-of-federal-property charge if he feels like using it. After that, it’s just a question of what other junk he wants to pile on.”

“I’m sorry I got you into this,” he said.

Gideon took Nancy’s answering silence as confirmation of her own regret. The cell phone beeped again. Tillman’s number popped up on the screen

“Can you hold on, Nancy?”

“Is it Tillman?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell him to ditch his phone. Both of you need to do that as soon as we’re done with this call. Our cells are encrypted so they can’t listen to us, but they can still triangulate the signal to locate you.”

Gideon's War and Hard Target

“Okay. 82222222 d‡Hold on.” Gideon put her on hold and took...

“We need to set up a delivery time and place for those items we talked about,” said his brother. That was their cover. Gideon was Tillman’s arms dealer.

From the way Tillman spoke it was clear to Gideon that Verhoven was in the room with him and might even be listening in on their conversation. “Where and when?” Gideon asked.

“There’s a park on Sully Road in Centerville, just off twenty-eight. Be there in two hours.”

“I’ll need at least four to get together the whole package.”

“Fine. Four hours then.”

“But there’s some options you need to specify on your shopping list.”

He understood this was Gideon’s cue for Tillman to communicate whatever he could about what he’d learned so far.

“Those last breaching charges you sold me were dog shit. I need the good stuff. Skip the Charlies, the Oscars, both of the things from Latvia, and none of that Irish stuff. I’d prefer the Eagles, but the Richards would also be okay.”

“No to Charlie, Oscar, double Latvia or Ireland, yes to the Eagles and Richards.”

“Write it down, man. I can’t afford to have a problem.”

Charlie, Oscar—that was radio letter code. He was pretty sure that’s what Tillman was getting at. He wrote down the letters. C. O. L. L. I. E. R. Tillman continued: “While I’ve got you, I don’t want you using that supplier you asked me about.” He hoped Gideon would understand he was talking about Mixon. “It’s a dead issue.”

There was a brief pause. “Understood.”

“Four hours.”

“One last thing. I have an inside source says the Feds are upping their scanning game. You need to burn this phone and move on.”

“Copy that. Thanks for the heads-up.” Tillman hung up. He’d wanted to tell Gideon that he’d discovered the target was the State of the Union address, but that would have to wait for their face-to-face meeting four hours from now.

Gideon switched back to Nancy. “That was Tillman. Verhoven was listening, so he couldn’t say anything directly, but he managed to tell me that Mixon is dead. And that the guy Mixon recorded talking to Verhoven: His name is Collier. Can you trace that?”

Nancy sighed. “Dahlgren grilled the hell out of me half an hour ago, and he’s trying to get me to tell him where you are. I convinced him that I didn’t know. And that’s when he suspended me. He’s in damage control mode right now. He won’t listen to reason, he won’t listen to me, and he especially won’t listen to you. If he brings you in, it’s just going to be so he can pin this whole disaster in West Virginia on you.”

Gideon felt a rush of anger toward Dahlgren. Nancy had just been trying to do her job, and now she was being punished for it by a bureaucrat who was more concerned with Mix qned with covering his own ass than with protecting the public. Worse still, Nancy was his only ally inside the Bureau, whose resources he needed.

“Do you have any way to check out Collier? If we get some solid proof, Dahlgren won’t have a choice except to listen.”

He could hear Nancy breathing on the other end. He knew he was asking a lot of her, but without her help he would be operating blindly. Finally, after what seemed like minutes, she said softly, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Then the phone clicked dead.

Gideon was coming up on a rest stop, the welcome station for the state of Virginia. He pulled in, set his phone in a rack full of brochures detailing the state’s many fine tourist destinations, and decided to forgo the cup of coffee he desperately needed so he could distance himself as quickly as possible from the traceable burner.

Nancy got off the phone and put her face in her hands. She was sitting at her desk on K Street, staring out the window. She knew Gideon was right. Dahlgren wouldn’t listen to reason, and without more evidence, they’d never be able to convince him. But what could she do? She’d been suspended. Someone from OPR was supposed to come in about five minutes and take her gun and her credentials.

She sighed and looked at her watch.

Dahlgren may have given the order for her suspension. But that didn’t mean the word had reached the IT department yet. She logged into her account and started typing furiously.

It only took a moment for the computer to find a correlation between the names Collier and Verhoven.

Collier, John C. SS# 000-41-3797. DOB 4/16/85. Born Pocatello, Idaho.

She pulled his credit bureau report and found that his second most recent address was listed in Anderson, West Virginia. Six months ago, though, he had moved to an address in Idaho.

She pulled up the address, found it registered to Wilco Partners, LLC. A few more minutes of data drilling revealed that Wilco Partners consisted of only one partner, a man by the name of Dale Wilmot. A quick scan of Google revealed that Forbes magazine named him the 957th richest man in America, with business interests primarily in timber, but also in heating, air-conditioning, and trucking.

He was a big handsome guy in his late fifties who looked like the older brother of the star in a cowboy movie.

According to an article in Forbes, Wilmot’s only son had been grievously injured in Iraq nearly two years ago, after which Wilmot had ceded daily operations of his companies to senior company management and, in the words of the article, “retreated to his majestic Idaho estate where he has devoted himself largely to philanthropic enterprises and to caring for his son.”

The address of Wilmot’s estate was unlisted, but Nancy managed to track it down through a federal tax assessment dated a year ago. But as the address came on screen, two tall men in dark suits walked into her office. “Special Agent Clement,” one of them said, “I would request that you surrender your duty weapon and credentials, and then accompany me to—”