Gallows Pole, page 23
Udovin quickened his pace.
***
“I’m a federal agent,” Sims called out. “This man is…”
“I said GET ON THE GROUND!” Sims could hear the near hysteria in the man’s voice. Someone in the crowd of sightseers saw the gun and screamed.
“Best do as he says, mate,” the man who’d attacked him said with a pronounced British accent. The bastard was actually grinning. “Unless you want to lay odds on which one he shoots first.” He began slowly sinking to his knees, his hands raised above his head.
“God damn it,” Sims muttered. He did the same, but as his hands went up, he paused to touch his earpiece. “This is One,” he muttered. “Some motherfucker bushwacked me. I got a Park Cop holding me at gunpoint.”
“This is Three,” a voice came back. “Two’s down. Looks like someone dosed him with the Lot Seventeen.”
Sims thought of the object he’d seen in his attacker’s hand. “I think this guy tried to get me with the same stuff.” He looked at the Park Policeman advancing on him. Two more were converging from the direction of the Memorial. There were more screams from the crowd. Someone started to run, and in a moment, others joined him. “Stand by,” he said. He raised his voice. “I’m with Homeland Security,” he called out.
“He’s lying,” the man who’d attacked him said. “This man is a wanted terrorist. I’ve been trailing him for months. He’s scouting the…”
“Look on the ground over there,” Sims interrupted. “He was trying to use some sort of chemical agent.”
“Bollocks,” the other man said.
“Both of you shut up!” the cop said, his voice breaking on the first word. He drew closer, the gun moving back and forth between Sims and the other man. By the time he was close enough for Sims to see his hand shaking, the crowd noise had reached a crescendo, and more people were beginning to run. They didn’t know exactly what was happening, or where the danger was coming from. Small groups were running in different directions. The other two cops stopped, clearly torn between helping their fellow officer and trying to get the crowd under control. One drew his own weapon, someone cried out “GUN!” and the panic suddenly became general. Still confused and unsure of where the threat was, the panic at the idea of an unseen gun nevertheless caused the crowd to jell into a full-fledged mob. And with the perverse logic of a mob, they found a common direction—directly into one of the officers. He screamed as the leading edge of the mob barreled into him. The officer holding the gun on Sims turned to see what was going on. In that moment, Sims moved. He was on his feet in a second. As the officer with the gun turned back, Sims was on him. He wrenched the gun from the cop’s hand with his right hand and hit him a short, chopping blow with his left that dropped him to his knees. Sims turned quickly, gun in hand, toward the man who’d attacked him. But the man with the British accent was up and running. Sims raised his weapon, registered the numbers of fleeing men, women and children, and dropped the gun to his side with a muttered curse. He couldn’t take the chance of a stray bullet hitting a civilian.
“Time to get the hell out of Dodge,” he muttered. He stuck the gun in his waistband, reached up and touched his earpiece. “This is Sims. Fall back to the rally point.” He started walking quickly in the direction of Constitution Avenue. “I say again, fall back to the rally point. Acknowledge.”
“Three, Acknowledged,” Felix’s voice came back. “I’ve got Two. He’s walking. Barely.”
“Four, Five…give me your sitrep.”
There was no answer. He swore under his breath. He turned and saw another Park Policeman, gun out, directly in his path. He let the gun in his hand slip out and fall to the ground. The cop didn’t seem to notice. He heard the sharp double bark of the gun at the same time as a pair of sledgehammer blows hit him in the chest and knocked him to the ground.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Campbell climbed into the limousine, Woodward squeezing his huge bulk in behind him. Rusk was waiting for him, perched at the edge of the jump seat.
“Report,” Campbell said.
“I’m afraid success has been mixed, sir,” Rusk said, his face betraying no emotion. “Bache and her team have Saxon and Collette in their vehicle.”
“Good. And the rest?”
“Sims apparently saw Mr. Dawes coming. They fought. The Park Police tried to intervene, and there was a panic. Dawes is headed for the rendezvous, and Sims is in custody. ”
Campbell took a deep breath, obviously struggling to get himself under control. “Lanier?”
“The Lot Seventeen apparently sent him into some sort of convulsion. Needless to say, it attracted attention as well. Udovin was forced to withdraw.”
“Damn it,” Campbell said. “Bache said he might come after Saxon, but he’d surely come after one of his men.” He took out his handkerchief and mopped his brow. “We can still get to Sims. Handle that yourself.”
“Yes, sir.”
Campbell looked thoughtful. “In fact,” he said, “have a talk with him before you bring him to the farm. He may be more reasonable about things than Bishop.”
He won’t take sides against Bishop, sir.”
“He may not have to. I’ll trust to your judgment in how to handle him.” He grimaced. “Whatever happens, we can’t just leave him in custody. He could become an embarrassment if people start asking questions. Or worse, of he starts answering them. Is that clear?”
“As crystal, sir,” Rusk said. “And there’s still Calhoun.”
“Yes,” Campbell nodded. “There’s still Calhoun. Does the other team have him?”
“No report, sir,” Rusk said. He looked at this watch.” But they should be moving about now.”
***
The door to the farmhouse was old and solid, hewn from an oak cut by Calhoun’s Grandpa Roger in 1929. It took three solid blows of the battering ram to even move it, and then only slightly. Finally Calhoun’s voice came from behind it.
“It ain’t locked, you dumb motherfuckers.”
The two black-clad men looked at each other, then uncertainly back at the three other members of their team crouched behind them on the porch. Two more were watching the back door. Finally, one of the men shrugged, reached out with one gloved hand, and opened the door. That done, one went in high, the other low.
Calhoun was seated in an overstuffed chair in the living room. Despite the heat outside and the stuffiness of the room, he had a blanket wrapped around him. The TV was on across the room, turned low. There was a baseball game on.
“Took y’all long enough to get here,” Calhoun drawled. “I was startin‘ to think y’weren’t gonna make it.”
“Hands out where we can see them, asshole,” the leader growled.
“Awright,” Calhoun said agreeably. The black-clad men tensed as one hand came out with something in it. They relaxed slightly when they saw it appeared to be a TV remote.
“Drop it,” the leader said. “You’re coming with us.”
Calhoun shook his head. “Nope. Don’t believe I am.”
“You haven’t got a choice, asshole,” the man snarled. “And I said DROP IT!”
Calhoun smiled. “Aww, I really don’ t think you want me to do that.” The leader started to say something, but Calhoun broke in. “I’m gonna stand up now. Real slow, okay? Don’t get twitchy.” He stood up, moving as slowly as an old man with rheumatism. Fingers tightened on triggers. As he rose, the blanket fell off. An involuntary groan came from one of the men behind the leader as they saw what Calhoun was wearing.
A wide belt encircled Calhoun’s body, right below the chest. A number of thick metal cylinders that looked as if they were made from cut sections of rusty iron pipe were fastened to the belt. Wires led from the cylinders to make a bundle under Calhoun’s left armpit. A single wire led from there to the “remote” in his hand. They noticed then that he had his thumb on one of the buttons.
“I see y’all recognize what I got on,” Calhoun said. “So you know what’ll happen if I don’t hold this here button down.”
One of the men behind the leader raised a weapon. It was different from the others, fatter, and it appeared to be made of plastic. Calhoun raised the remote a little higher.
“Now, buddy,” he said, “you may think that Zombie Juice’ll have time to get to me before I can turn this loose. But how sure are you?” His voice turned hard. “Put it down,” he said. Slowly, the man lowered the weapon.
‘Y’all may not know this,” Calhoun said, his voice easy and conversational once more, “but I got taken prisoner once. In…well, y’all ain’t got any need to know where. But anyhow, let’s just say I didn’t much care for the experience. In fact,” he raised the detonator. Two of the black-clad men flinched involuntarily, “I decided I’d rather be dead than go though anything like that again.”
“Well,” the leader said calmly, “looks like we have a standoff.”
Calhoun shook his head. “Not really.” He released the button. The detonator began a slow, steady beeping. “Five,” Calhoun said. “Four…” the men in black were falling over themselves trying to get out the door. By “two” they were on the porch, by “one” Calhoun could hear them yelling in the yard.
“Zero,” Calhoun said.
When Thomas Calhoun was five years old, lightning had hit the old farmhouse in the middle of a storm that had also torn half the roof off the barn and knocked out the power for every home and farm in a five mile radius. The crack of the explosions from the front and back of the house was nearly as loud as the thunder that had split that night wide open, and the smile on Calhoun’s face was an older, scarier version of the one that he’d worn on that night, the night when a five-year-old country boy discovered how much he loved things that went boom.
He walked over to the sofa and pulled a shotgun from behind it. He limped to the door and threw it open onto a scene from Hell. Bodies and bits of bodies lay in heaps on the scorched ground. “Mama’s gonna have a damn fit if she finds how I bad I messed up the yard,” Calhoun muttered.
A low moan from one of the lumps on the ground got his attention. He walked over and nudged the body with his foot. He grimaced; he still hadn’t mastered the leverage it took to turn a heavy object over with the artificial limbs. He bent over and turned the man face up with his hand, holding the shotgun ready in the other.
He had been on the edge of the kill zone of one of the two Claymore mines Calhoun had concealed in the yard. His body armor had absorbed many of the steel balls thrown out by the high explosive that had scythed down his comrades, but the blast wave had undoubtedly pulped most of his internal organs, and at least one of the deadly fragments had taken his right hand off. The blood pumped in slowly diminishing spurts from the severed wrist. Calhoun looked dispassionately at the wound, then reached down to raise the face shield on the dying man’s helmet. He looked vaguely familiar to Calhoun, but he couldn’t place the face.
“Buddy-ro,’” Calhoun said, “I don’t think you’re gonna make it.” He pointed the shotgun at the man’s face. “Any last words?”
The man was struggling to speak, his lips working spastically. Finally, he managed to draw a last deep breath through his pulverized lungs.
“Fuck…you…” he breathed out, and died.
Calhoun nodded. “That’s probably what I woulda said.” He walked around the back to check for more survivors. The mines he’d set back there had left nothing alive. He could hear the pigs in their lot a few hundred yards away squealing in consternation at all the noise and commotion. When he returned to the front yard, he stood over the man who’d cursed him. After a moment, he reached down and closed the man’s eyes. He looked back at the pigs.
“Y’all gonna eat good tonight,” he said.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
The B.O.T. was parked on a side street near the National Academy of Sciences. The sides of the truck now bore the logo of PEPCO, the company that provided the District with its electrical power, and Felix had blocked off the parking places on either side with orange traffic cones. Passersby on the sidewalk stared curiously at the three men who jogged up to the truck, one so pale and shaky he was practically being carried by one of the others.
“Lanier, can you drive?” Bishop said as he yanked the truck’s passenger door open. “Head for Saxon and Collette’s last position.”
Lanier nodded weakly. “I think…” he turned, doubled over, and began retching again. He had thrown up four times between the Memorial and reaching the B.O.T., and the contents of his stomach were strewn in long orange streaks along the sidewalks and curbs. All he had left to bring up was a thin greenish bile. A old woman walking by wrinkled her nose in disgust.
“Damn it,” Bishop snapped. “Okay. I’ll drive. Felix, can you find them?”
“Possibly,” Felix answered. “If they still have their earpieces in. I can find them through the signal from those.”
“Do it,” Bishop said. Felix nodded, got in, and headed into the back of the truck. Bishop followed, then pulled Lanier up behind him. He slid into the driver’s seat and started the truck. “Felix, report,” he called back. “Where are they?”
“I got signals on Sims, Saxon and Collette.” He paused. “Sims is down,” he said.
“Where?”
“By the Lincoln.” There was a pause. “But he’s okay.” There was a pause. “He’s in custody. A park cop shot him, but he had his vest on.” Another pause. “He’s off-line. They must have found the earpiece.”
Bishop slammed his hand against the steering wheel in frustration. “What about Saxon and Collette?”
“I got a signal on both of them. One’s moving, one’s not. You’re coming up on that one now.”
Bishop looked at the sidewalk. It was crowded with people, some standing in knots, looking towards the Memorials. Bishop could hear sirens. There was no sign of Saxon or Collette.
“Nothing.”
“Must have lost it. When…” he stopped.
“When they were taken,” Bishop said grimly. “What about the other one?”
“Moving,” Felix said. “Headed across the Chain Bridge.”
You can collect your people at my house, Campbell had said. The other men had filled Bishop in as they’d fled the scene. Someone had tried to take all of them, in broad daylight. And Bishop was meant to come after them. They knew he would, Campbell didn’t need Bache’s analytical skills to figure that out.
Bache. What the hell was Bache doing involved in this? And who else did Campbell have on his side?
“Sir,” Felix said. “I’ve lost the signal. Just on the other aide of the Chain Bridge.”
“Out of range?” Bishop said.
“Could be.”
“Or Campbell‘s people could have found it.”
Felix sounded unhappy. “Yes, sir.”
Bishop took a deep breath. He slowed the truck and made a left turn over the KeyBridge.
“Sir?” Felix said. “where are we….”
“They could be anywhere west of here by now,” Bishop said. “We’re just wandering around blind. We need a plan. And,” he said, looking directly at Lanier, “I need to have a talk with you people.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
He wasn’t in a cell. They’d taken away his body armor and his jacket, leaving him in jeans and T-shirt. They’d hauled him downtown, in the back of a police van and hustled him into an interrogation room, where he’d sat for the last four hours, alone, shackled by one ankle to a table bolted to the floor. He looked up again at the mirror on one wall. He assumed it was two-way, and that there was someone behind it.
“Hey,” he said to the mirror, “I gotta take a leak.”
There’d been no answer the last four times he’d said it, and he was expecting none this time. So he was surprised when the door swung open and a man came in. He was short, well-dressed, thoroughly nondescript. He took a seat opposite Sims.
“I want a lawyer,” Sims said.
The man adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.” The voice sounded familiar.
“What the hell does that mean?” Sims said.
“It means that you showed up at the Lincoln Memorial, armed, wearing a bulletproof vest. You incited a riot and assaulted a uniformed officer before being subdued and taken into custody. That qualifies you for what are known as special administrative measures. Including a complete blackout of communications that might allow you to pass instructions to other potential terrorist cells.”
Sims looked at him for a moment. He’d suddenly placed the voice. “So that’s the way it’s going to be, then,” he said quietly. “Mr. Rusk, I presume.”
“An honor to meet you, sir.” The man extended a hand across the table. Sims ignored it. “And what the fuck do you want, Mr. Rusk?”
Rusk didn’t react to the snub, except to withdraw his hand. “I’m just a messenger.”
“For Campbell.”
“For the person who can ensure that you disappear into someplace no one knows about, where you will stay until he decides you’re of no further use. On the other hand, he’s also the person that can put you back in the game.”
Sims didn’t answer. Rusk went on. “‘You and your colleague, Captain Lanier, have been stuck in an office in Arlington, doing intelligence analysis, for the last two years. My employer thinks that is a shocking waste of talent. Yours especially.”
“Campbell,” Sims said again.
Rusk still didn’t take the bait. “He’d like to know if you’d like to get back into doing what you do best. What you’ve dedicated your life to. ”
“And what does he think that is?”
“Eliminating threats to your country.”
“And the alternative is that I get a bag thrown over my head and get shipped off to some bumfuck country to rot in a cell. If I’m lucky.”
Rusk didn’t answer.
Sims leaned back in the chair, “You have my attention. Tell me more.”
