Blood Covenent, page 13
He wrote the following list: NEW YORK, BOSTON, WASHINGTON, NORFOLK, ST. LOUIS, CHICAGO. What happens in a bad snowstorm? CNN runs stories about stranded travelers. The country’s air traffic system grinds to a halt. Snow melts, storms pass, and it gets plowed away. What would happen if the same airports were damaged by nuclear weapons? He stared at the list and circled CHICAGO. Disrupt the Midwest and eastern seaboard, and a small band could effectively paralyze the country. While they might clear the rubble from the runways, any electronics in the planes, radar, or towers that survived the blast would be little more than melted sand due to the electron magnetic pulse wave.
He leaned over to Jonas and whispered, “Go find Harper,now . The West Coast teams aren’t as important.”
Jonas looked from his boss to the note pad and saw Chicago underlined and circled. Louis was already tearing the sheet from the pad. He intended to shred the entire thing when he got back to his office.
“Now?”
Louis nodded. “Now.”
* * * *
George Carnady walked out of the meeting with Louis and casually asked, “You figured something out?”
Louis glanced at his old friend. “A hunch—nothing more.”
George pursed his lips as they waited for the elevator. “A hunch? You sent young Jonas scurrying off on a hunch?”
Louis simply smiled.
“I know about your hunches, Louis.”
“I hope I’m wrong—sometimes being right most of the time is a curse.”
“Then I really do need to worry.” He looked around. “I’d rather follow your hunch than wait for that windbag Feldman to shut up.”
CHAPTER 12
New York City
Sunday, July 4, 1999
11:30 P.M. EDT
Larry waved his access card past the face of the card reader. The heavy door rolled upwards, allowing him entrance to the Federal Building’s underground parking garage.
Thirty minutes ago he had left his wife Cindy and his sleepy children. Considering her foul mood as he kissed her goodbye, it would take more than flowers when he got home. Thejob had gotten in the way of the family again. An insistent digital page had interrupted a night of fireworks and promised romance. The LED display on his digital phone read the disturbing words FBI NEW YORK and the automatic response was to press the SEND key.
It was a recorded message sent by Feldman. The man never seemed to have a life beyond the Bureau. It was Sunday night on July 4. It was a day off. They certainly were not calling him for his expertise in dismantling nuclear bombs. He was basically as useful as the fourth wheel on a tricycle.
They were maneuvering through the traffic as crowds of middle class suburbanites rolled up their blankets and folded their lawn chairs. Some carried little ones who had somehow slumbered through the annual explosive spectacle. He shifted the weight of his youngest to his other arm and listened to Feldman’s agitated message.
“This is a priority one alert. Report now.” It was one of those broadcast messages sent to Feldman’s small army of agents gathering like an ill wind across the Manhattan landscape.
He clicked the phone off. Cindy needed no words; she recognized the look and the body language of his shoulders tightening. “You’re leaving us?” she snapped.
He nodded. “Problems.”
“There are always problems, Larry! All you have are problems. Yesterday you were gone all day, and when I asked what happened all you said was some national security mumbo jumbo.”
He spent yesterday locked in a stifling hot bathroom cradling a nuke, only to spend the next twelve hours in makeshift radiation decontamination center. He came home smelling of chlorine with no useful explanation for a wife and children.
“I’ll make it up to you…” he started.
“’I’ll make it up to you,’” she mimicked.
He spread his hands and knew he was losing the argument, and he did not even want to fight with Cindy.
“It’s always the same story,” she continued, cutting him off. “You’ll do this or that. This is what happened to Harvey Randall, Larry. You want that to happen to us? He spent his life doing thejob and his family got forgotten!”
Harvey had paid the price—divorce, estrangement from his kids, and banishment to the Bureau’s lesser offices. Harvey had been relegated to watching buffalo migrate through West Yellowstone and to prosecuting people who took antlers out of the park. No, he did not want to end up like Harvey, but he had a duty, and his duty stank.
“Well, do you?” she demanded.
He had failed to give her an answer. “No, of course not,” he mumbled.
“So stay home. Stay with us. It can wait ‘til morning,” she half demanded and half pleaded.
Larry closed his eyes recognizing the hurt he had no way of avoiding. “I can’t,” he whispered.
Cindy turned away, becoming a pillar of stone. “Someday, Larry, you’re going to have to choose between us or them. Maybe there are things you can’t talk about, but I’m your wife. I deserve better than this.”
He nodded his head in silent agreement. She deserved much more than he could give right now, but how do you leave the Bureau? Start you own security company or work for someone else—occasionally on the legal edge. His travel schedule would not get any better while his bank account improved, but Cindy wanted him to be a husband and father not a picture on the fireplace mantle.
Larry parked the Ford Explorer noting the other vehicles with Federal plates already clustered close to the elevators. He felt his service pistol slap against his ribs, noting he would probably lose his right to carry should he decide to move from the law enforcement community to the civilian world. It was a right he did not wish to lose. There were just too manycrazies out there.
The elevator carried him to the twenty-third floor of 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan. The doors opened into a lobby emblazoned with the FBI seal. He walked past the obligatory photographs of the President, the Attorney General, and the Director, service plaques, and the office directory. It could have been the ten-most-wanted list for all he cared. The receptionist’s desk was vacant, quietly blinking with lights to the several hundred phone lines inside the office. The lights were on minimum power, but he could see where everyone had clustered.
Positioned midway on the floor there was a fifty-seat auditorium complete with state of the art multimedia facilities and computer links. Coffee, donuts, and bagels could be gleaned from several wax paper bags, and a couple of cream cheese tins. Three stainless steel air pots with coffee were stacked behind the donuts. Everyone had one of the white Styrofoam coffee cups. It was almost midnight.
Larry liberated a long john with chopped nuts and found a spot inside the auditorium. The night became much darker when he recognized Feldman walking along the front. Slick looking Washington types were carefully gathering things together. Cindy’s angry words, the late hour, and a pompous fool like Feldman tarnished the glamour and intrigue Larry once felt. He sighed and wondered when he would get home.
Feldman moved to a speaker’s podium to the left of the main screen. He tapped the microphone. He cleared his throat and instructed everyone to find a seat. The wall clock ticked by 12:10.
“Thank you all for coming in tonight.”
Feldman pasted a plastic smile on his lips. Hassan Jamal’s image flickered to life on the screen behind him. “Yesterday, Hassan Jamal attempted to detonate a nuclear weapon in Trump Tower.”
The background rumble silenced as everyone examined the terrorist’s features. The image switched to a security camera’s footage. “Tonight—this happened.”
On the screen, a doctor approached with a stethoscope tucked into his breast pocket, and a clipboard in his right hand. He switched the clipboard to his left hand before stopping next a New York policeman sitting at a desk. The two talked for a few moments, before the cop pulled a list from a blue folder. When he looked back to the doctor, he found the muzzle of a pocket pistol.
The muzzle flash blossomed twice on the screen. The patrolman’s head snapped back against the ceramic wall; not from the impact of the bullets, but the spasm of his nervous system vainly attempting to dodge the .22 long rifle shells violating his eyeball.
The doctor looked back down the hall. The camera caught his features both front and profile. He pulled the cop’s hat down and settled him against the back wall before moving around into the room no longer under guard. It was Hassan Jamal’s room. Ten seconds later the man emerged and vanished back down the corridor. Hassan Jamal was as dead as the cop guarding him. The timestamp at the lower right corner read 10:04 P.M. 4-Jul-99 EDT—timed to take place when most of America was watching fireworks displays.
The replay faded to gray snow and Feldman cleared his throat, bringing attention back to him. The screen snapped with front and profile views of the murderer lifted from the videotape. “We don’t know who this person is—yet. We will know and we will knowfirst, ” ordered Feldman. The implied contest between the Bureau and any other Federal or state agency was clearly before them. “This photo has been broadcast to all airports, toll booths, and the NYPD. The NYPD is out for blood. They don’t take kindly to anyone who kills one of their own. We need to find this man first. We need to know what he knows.”
He paused, examining his office. It was odd collection of New York types and those who had been banished to the outer realms of the Bureau—the misfits and bad boys who had committed the ultimate sin of embarrassing the Bureau. Feldman had accepted his marching orders to use the misfits and find any other potential weapons now. Even the Bureau understood that the unconventional Rambo types sometimes figured things out before painstaking, ground-pounding methods could. Nuclear weapons changed the convention.
“We are dealing with a national security issue of the highest priority. I will say this once: The White House is quite agitated about what happened here yesterday afternoon. We need to proceed as quickly as possible to rule in or out the possibility of additional weapons.” The screen dissolved to a photograph of the case and weapon.
“This is what it looks like. If you find something like this, you are to call in immediately. Do not attempt to disarm the weapon. You do not have the tools or expertise to accomplish this task. The case is a hardened steel alloy, and the interior has a series of booby traps including motion detectors, light traps, and a computerized detonation program.” The screen clicked through a series of photographs detailing the interior of the weapon.
“Be aware there are additional agencies deploying teams to the New York area. The White House will not tolerate any interagency squabbles on this one, but you’d better be the ones to find our doctor friend with the gun and any other bombs. The Director will not be pleased if some agency spook or National Security Agency nerd comes up with the prize.”
“Ah, Lou, why don’t you say it straight for once?” rumbled someone from beneath a Stetson in the back row of the auditorium. “We’re here to save God and country, maybe mother and apple pie as well.”
Larry sensed a familiarity, but couldn’t quite place the face and voice together. He turned to see a cowboy hat bobbing in the far corner, hovering above a slouched figure wearing denim trousers and Tony Lama boots. The brown leather jacket and striped work shirt concealed the bulging autoloader in a shoulder holster.
Feldman glowered at the corner. Larry recognized the outrage and fury in the assistant director’s features. “Excuse me!” he demanded.
The black Stetson titled back revealing the lower portion of the agitator’s face. “Lou, why don’t you just tell us that if we do good on this, you get one of those at-a-boy memos in your permanent file, possibly another promotion, and who knows, you might even get to God status and some president will pick you to head the Bureau.
“For you, Lou, it’s never been about catching bad guys, just getting the credit for the work when this is over. Hell, some of us can go back to counting buffalo turds in West Yellowstone.” The Stetson leaned back revealing Harvey Randall.
Larry suppressed a smirk. Harvey was back and upset with the brass. Feldman started to open his mouth, but Harvey stood up and shuffled into the aisle. “The truth be told, Lou, you haven’t a clue about who the bad guys are beyond this nebulous Hezbollah terrorist come to America with a nuke in his shaving kit.” Harvey stopped and surveyed the audience. He picked out half a dozen others who had been pulled in from Bureau’s dustier corners. Skilled investigators who had tread on the Administration’s toes in the last seven years.
“But don’t you worry, Lou. We’ll find these bad guys. We’ll make it all safe again, and you’ll take the credit. That’s a tried and true method, isn’t it? Those of us who don’t fit the cookie cutter mold will be sent back to the closet until the next time you need us. Besides, what are you going to do about it, Lou?”
Harvey waited out the uncomfortable silence. “Nothing. That’s what you’re gonna do. You go back to Washington or camp out here safe and sound on the twenty-third floor. Because this time we’re not talking about the Israelis listening in on a little phone sex from the Oval Office, or monitoring a Chinese spy selling out the latest in warhead technology. This time we are talking about live nukes in our own territory.
“You and your White House toads stay out of the way and leave it to professionals who might have a clue about where to start. Because one thing’s certain: the answers aren’t here. They’re out there,” he jerked a thumb towards the windows overlooking the city’s skyline.
Feldman leaned forward. His fingers whitened on the podium he was gripping. “I suppose you know who the gunman is,” he snapped.
Harvey shrugged. “Not yet, maybe by breakfast.”
Feldman laughed. “Quite a boast for a has-been.”
Harvey waved his hand. “Really? That’s why Cortez, Rico, Mahler and Hamilton are here.” The other misfits sat a little straighter at the mention of the names. “We’re all embarrassments, sent away because we stomped on the wrong toes. The Bureau is throwing everything at the wall on this one and somebody at the Hoover Building is huddled on their knees praying to a higher power hoping something sticks.”
“Agent Randall, that’s not how the Bureau works,” protested Feldman.
The half smirk floated across Harvey’s lips. “No, the Bureau hasn’t worked for a long time. We lost our soul at Ruby Ridge and Waco. We hid the truth about TWA 800, and then there were the unmentionables. But I’m one of the things being thrown at the wall, and I’m serving notice. Stay out of my hair, Feldman, and I won’t cause you grief.” Harvey smiled and wandered out of the auditorium, gathering the fliers, spec sheets, and contact lists from the table.
The meeting dispersed a few minutes later. Larry found Harvey staring at a large street map on the wall. He glanced sideways at his old partner and explained, “Go find someone else. You survived our last escapade, but you’ve got a wife and family. I’m poison.”
Larry shrugged. “You’re my friend.”
Harvey acknowledged the truth with a grunt. He stuck his hands in his pockets. “You got a car?”
“Downstairs.”
“Then let’s get out of here. I need to make a call.”
Larry followed him to the elevators. “Anybody in particular?”
Harvey looked over Larry’s shoulder. “Remember the spook?”
“The one at Odrick’s Corner?”
Harvey nodded, visualizing the neighborhood torn apart by a firefight. It was just before he fell from grace.
“Why talk to him?” Larry pressed.
Harvey sighed. “Because I don’t think Feldman and the wizards at the Hoover Building have a clue about what’s going on. I’m not sure the spook has any ideas either. Besides, the spook didn’t banish me to West Yellowstone.” He looked back at the conference room. “Theydid.”
CHAPTER 13
South Of Sharon, Wisconsin
Monday, July 5, 1999
1:30 P.M., CDT
Jim Harper settled into a practiced Weaver stance and brought the .45 ACP 1911 government model pistol to aim. His index finger stroked the serrated trigger and his weak hand thumb flipped down the safety. He felt the heft of the weapon against the web of his strong hand, and the grit from the checkered Goncalo Alves wood grips bit into the meaty part of his palms.
The worries melted away as his world became a simple universe consisting of front post and rear sights. He let his breath whistle past his teeth. The tension drained from his limbs. His vision leaped forward towards the Pepsi cans perched along a two-by-four thirty yards away, then raced back to the front post.
Five cans and seven rounds of 230 grain full metal jacket with 6.2 grains of Unique nestled between round and primer. The summer breeze caught a whiff of Remington’s Nitro CLP lubricant. The gun’s slide sweated the synthetic oil above the slide stop and thumb safety. The grip safety locked tightly as he gently squeezed the trigger, feeling it break at four pounds.
Five shots and five brownish white clouds.
Several years ago he had determined Pepsi cans made the best explosions. Coca Cola was somewhat lackluster and Budweiser was simply too expensive for an afternoon with his guns.
He twisted, finding two spinner targets rated for up to .44 Magnum rounds. Two hollow sounding gongs and the slide locked open. Two smoke tendrils drifted from the shell ejector port and muzzle. His grip relaxed as he thumbed the magazine release just behind the trigger guard. The empty seven-round magazine dropped into his free hand. Without taking his eyes from the target range, he fed a full magazine into the magazine funnel and thumbed the slide stop. The slide slammed forward on the strength of an eighteen-pound spring.
Harper dropped to one knee, finding the B-27 human silhouette target. He dropped three rounds into a ragged cloverleaf configuration above where an eye should be. He twisted his body, bringing to focus a second B-27 less than ten yards distant. His last four rounds obliterated the X-ring. He sprang the magazine from the .45 and loaded a third one as he came to a stop in prone position.
He leaned over to Jonas and whispered, “Go find Harper,now . The West Coast teams aren’t as important.”
Jonas looked from his boss to the note pad and saw Chicago underlined and circled. Louis was already tearing the sheet from the pad. He intended to shred the entire thing when he got back to his office.
“Now?”
Louis nodded. “Now.”
* * * *
George Carnady walked out of the meeting with Louis and casually asked, “You figured something out?”
Louis glanced at his old friend. “A hunch—nothing more.”
George pursed his lips as they waited for the elevator. “A hunch? You sent young Jonas scurrying off on a hunch?”
Louis simply smiled.
“I know about your hunches, Louis.”
“I hope I’m wrong—sometimes being right most of the time is a curse.”
“Then I really do need to worry.” He looked around. “I’d rather follow your hunch than wait for that windbag Feldman to shut up.”
CHAPTER 12
New York City
Sunday, July 4, 1999
11:30 P.M. EDT
Larry waved his access card past the face of the card reader. The heavy door rolled upwards, allowing him entrance to the Federal Building’s underground parking garage.
Thirty minutes ago he had left his wife Cindy and his sleepy children. Considering her foul mood as he kissed her goodbye, it would take more than flowers when he got home. Thejob had gotten in the way of the family again. An insistent digital page had interrupted a night of fireworks and promised romance. The LED display on his digital phone read the disturbing words FBI NEW YORK and the automatic response was to press the SEND key.
It was a recorded message sent by Feldman. The man never seemed to have a life beyond the Bureau. It was Sunday night on July 4. It was a day off. They certainly were not calling him for his expertise in dismantling nuclear bombs. He was basically as useful as the fourth wheel on a tricycle.
They were maneuvering through the traffic as crowds of middle class suburbanites rolled up their blankets and folded their lawn chairs. Some carried little ones who had somehow slumbered through the annual explosive spectacle. He shifted the weight of his youngest to his other arm and listened to Feldman’s agitated message.
“This is a priority one alert. Report now.” It was one of those broadcast messages sent to Feldman’s small army of agents gathering like an ill wind across the Manhattan landscape.
He clicked the phone off. Cindy needed no words; she recognized the look and the body language of his shoulders tightening. “You’re leaving us?” she snapped.
He nodded. “Problems.”
“There are always problems, Larry! All you have are problems. Yesterday you were gone all day, and when I asked what happened all you said was some national security mumbo jumbo.”
He spent yesterday locked in a stifling hot bathroom cradling a nuke, only to spend the next twelve hours in makeshift radiation decontamination center. He came home smelling of chlorine with no useful explanation for a wife and children.
“I’ll make it up to you…” he started.
“’I’ll make it up to you,’” she mimicked.
He spread his hands and knew he was losing the argument, and he did not even want to fight with Cindy.
“It’s always the same story,” she continued, cutting him off. “You’ll do this or that. This is what happened to Harvey Randall, Larry. You want that to happen to us? He spent his life doing thejob and his family got forgotten!”
Harvey had paid the price—divorce, estrangement from his kids, and banishment to the Bureau’s lesser offices. Harvey had been relegated to watching buffalo migrate through West Yellowstone and to prosecuting people who took antlers out of the park. No, he did not want to end up like Harvey, but he had a duty, and his duty stank.
“Well, do you?” she demanded.
He had failed to give her an answer. “No, of course not,” he mumbled.
“So stay home. Stay with us. It can wait ‘til morning,” she half demanded and half pleaded.
Larry closed his eyes recognizing the hurt he had no way of avoiding. “I can’t,” he whispered.
Cindy turned away, becoming a pillar of stone. “Someday, Larry, you’re going to have to choose between us or them. Maybe there are things you can’t talk about, but I’m your wife. I deserve better than this.”
He nodded his head in silent agreement. She deserved much more than he could give right now, but how do you leave the Bureau? Start you own security company or work for someone else—occasionally on the legal edge. His travel schedule would not get any better while his bank account improved, but Cindy wanted him to be a husband and father not a picture on the fireplace mantle.
Larry parked the Ford Explorer noting the other vehicles with Federal plates already clustered close to the elevators. He felt his service pistol slap against his ribs, noting he would probably lose his right to carry should he decide to move from the law enforcement community to the civilian world. It was a right he did not wish to lose. There were just too manycrazies out there.
The elevator carried him to the twenty-third floor of 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan. The doors opened into a lobby emblazoned with the FBI seal. He walked past the obligatory photographs of the President, the Attorney General, and the Director, service plaques, and the office directory. It could have been the ten-most-wanted list for all he cared. The receptionist’s desk was vacant, quietly blinking with lights to the several hundred phone lines inside the office. The lights were on minimum power, but he could see where everyone had clustered.
Positioned midway on the floor there was a fifty-seat auditorium complete with state of the art multimedia facilities and computer links. Coffee, donuts, and bagels could be gleaned from several wax paper bags, and a couple of cream cheese tins. Three stainless steel air pots with coffee were stacked behind the donuts. Everyone had one of the white Styrofoam coffee cups. It was almost midnight.
Larry liberated a long john with chopped nuts and found a spot inside the auditorium. The night became much darker when he recognized Feldman walking along the front. Slick looking Washington types were carefully gathering things together. Cindy’s angry words, the late hour, and a pompous fool like Feldman tarnished the glamour and intrigue Larry once felt. He sighed and wondered when he would get home.
Feldman moved to a speaker’s podium to the left of the main screen. He tapped the microphone. He cleared his throat and instructed everyone to find a seat. The wall clock ticked by 12:10.
“Thank you all for coming in tonight.”
Feldman pasted a plastic smile on his lips. Hassan Jamal’s image flickered to life on the screen behind him. “Yesterday, Hassan Jamal attempted to detonate a nuclear weapon in Trump Tower.”
The background rumble silenced as everyone examined the terrorist’s features. The image switched to a security camera’s footage. “Tonight—this happened.”
On the screen, a doctor approached with a stethoscope tucked into his breast pocket, and a clipboard in his right hand. He switched the clipboard to his left hand before stopping next a New York policeman sitting at a desk. The two talked for a few moments, before the cop pulled a list from a blue folder. When he looked back to the doctor, he found the muzzle of a pocket pistol.
The muzzle flash blossomed twice on the screen. The patrolman’s head snapped back against the ceramic wall; not from the impact of the bullets, but the spasm of his nervous system vainly attempting to dodge the .22 long rifle shells violating his eyeball.
The doctor looked back down the hall. The camera caught his features both front and profile. He pulled the cop’s hat down and settled him against the back wall before moving around into the room no longer under guard. It was Hassan Jamal’s room. Ten seconds later the man emerged and vanished back down the corridor. Hassan Jamal was as dead as the cop guarding him. The timestamp at the lower right corner read 10:04 P.M. 4-Jul-99 EDT—timed to take place when most of America was watching fireworks displays.
The replay faded to gray snow and Feldman cleared his throat, bringing attention back to him. The screen snapped with front and profile views of the murderer lifted from the videotape. “We don’t know who this person is—yet. We will know and we will knowfirst, ” ordered Feldman. The implied contest between the Bureau and any other Federal or state agency was clearly before them. “This photo has been broadcast to all airports, toll booths, and the NYPD. The NYPD is out for blood. They don’t take kindly to anyone who kills one of their own. We need to find this man first. We need to know what he knows.”
He paused, examining his office. It was odd collection of New York types and those who had been banished to the outer realms of the Bureau—the misfits and bad boys who had committed the ultimate sin of embarrassing the Bureau. Feldman had accepted his marching orders to use the misfits and find any other potential weapons now. Even the Bureau understood that the unconventional Rambo types sometimes figured things out before painstaking, ground-pounding methods could. Nuclear weapons changed the convention.
“We are dealing with a national security issue of the highest priority. I will say this once: The White House is quite agitated about what happened here yesterday afternoon. We need to proceed as quickly as possible to rule in or out the possibility of additional weapons.” The screen dissolved to a photograph of the case and weapon.
“This is what it looks like. If you find something like this, you are to call in immediately. Do not attempt to disarm the weapon. You do not have the tools or expertise to accomplish this task. The case is a hardened steel alloy, and the interior has a series of booby traps including motion detectors, light traps, and a computerized detonation program.” The screen clicked through a series of photographs detailing the interior of the weapon.
“Be aware there are additional agencies deploying teams to the New York area. The White House will not tolerate any interagency squabbles on this one, but you’d better be the ones to find our doctor friend with the gun and any other bombs. The Director will not be pleased if some agency spook or National Security Agency nerd comes up with the prize.”
“Ah, Lou, why don’t you say it straight for once?” rumbled someone from beneath a Stetson in the back row of the auditorium. “We’re here to save God and country, maybe mother and apple pie as well.”
Larry sensed a familiarity, but couldn’t quite place the face and voice together. He turned to see a cowboy hat bobbing in the far corner, hovering above a slouched figure wearing denim trousers and Tony Lama boots. The brown leather jacket and striped work shirt concealed the bulging autoloader in a shoulder holster.
Feldman glowered at the corner. Larry recognized the outrage and fury in the assistant director’s features. “Excuse me!” he demanded.
The black Stetson titled back revealing the lower portion of the agitator’s face. “Lou, why don’t you just tell us that if we do good on this, you get one of those at-a-boy memos in your permanent file, possibly another promotion, and who knows, you might even get to God status and some president will pick you to head the Bureau.
“For you, Lou, it’s never been about catching bad guys, just getting the credit for the work when this is over. Hell, some of us can go back to counting buffalo turds in West Yellowstone.” The Stetson leaned back revealing Harvey Randall.
Larry suppressed a smirk. Harvey was back and upset with the brass. Feldman started to open his mouth, but Harvey stood up and shuffled into the aisle. “The truth be told, Lou, you haven’t a clue about who the bad guys are beyond this nebulous Hezbollah terrorist come to America with a nuke in his shaving kit.” Harvey stopped and surveyed the audience. He picked out half a dozen others who had been pulled in from Bureau’s dustier corners. Skilled investigators who had tread on the Administration’s toes in the last seven years.
“But don’t you worry, Lou. We’ll find these bad guys. We’ll make it all safe again, and you’ll take the credit. That’s a tried and true method, isn’t it? Those of us who don’t fit the cookie cutter mold will be sent back to the closet until the next time you need us. Besides, what are you going to do about it, Lou?”
Harvey waited out the uncomfortable silence. “Nothing. That’s what you’re gonna do. You go back to Washington or camp out here safe and sound on the twenty-third floor. Because this time we’re not talking about the Israelis listening in on a little phone sex from the Oval Office, or monitoring a Chinese spy selling out the latest in warhead technology. This time we are talking about live nukes in our own territory.
“You and your White House toads stay out of the way and leave it to professionals who might have a clue about where to start. Because one thing’s certain: the answers aren’t here. They’re out there,” he jerked a thumb towards the windows overlooking the city’s skyline.
Feldman leaned forward. His fingers whitened on the podium he was gripping. “I suppose you know who the gunman is,” he snapped.
Harvey shrugged. “Not yet, maybe by breakfast.”
Feldman laughed. “Quite a boast for a has-been.”
Harvey waved his hand. “Really? That’s why Cortez, Rico, Mahler and Hamilton are here.” The other misfits sat a little straighter at the mention of the names. “We’re all embarrassments, sent away because we stomped on the wrong toes. The Bureau is throwing everything at the wall on this one and somebody at the Hoover Building is huddled on their knees praying to a higher power hoping something sticks.”
“Agent Randall, that’s not how the Bureau works,” protested Feldman.
The half smirk floated across Harvey’s lips. “No, the Bureau hasn’t worked for a long time. We lost our soul at Ruby Ridge and Waco. We hid the truth about TWA 800, and then there were the unmentionables. But I’m one of the things being thrown at the wall, and I’m serving notice. Stay out of my hair, Feldman, and I won’t cause you grief.” Harvey smiled and wandered out of the auditorium, gathering the fliers, spec sheets, and contact lists from the table.
The meeting dispersed a few minutes later. Larry found Harvey staring at a large street map on the wall. He glanced sideways at his old partner and explained, “Go find someone else. You survived our last escapade, but you’ve got a wife and family. I’m poison.”
Larry shrugged. “You’re my friend.”
Harvey acknowledged the truth with a grunt. He stuck his hands in his pockets. “You got a car?”
“Downstairs.”
“Then let’s get out of here. I need to make a call.”
Larry followed him to the elevators. “Anybody in particular?”
Harvey looked over Larry’s shoulder. “Remember the spook?”
“The one at Odrick’s Corner?”
Harvey nodded, visualizing the neighborhood torn apart by a firefight. It was just before he fell from grace.
“Why talk to him?” Larry pressed.
Harvey sighed. “Because I don’t think Feldman and the wizards at the Hoover Building have a clue about what’s going on. I’m not sure the spook has any ideas either. Besides, the spook didn’t banish me to West Yellowstone.” He looked back at the conference room. “Theydid.”
CHAPTER 13
South Of Sharon, Wisconsin
Monday, July 5, 1999
1:30 P.M., CDT
Jim Harper settled into a practiced Weaver stance and brought the .45 ACP 1911 government model pistol to aim. His index finger stroked the serrated trigger and his weak hand thumb flipped down the safety. He felt the heft of the weapon against the web of his strong hand, and the grit from the checkered Goncalo Alves wood grips bit into the meaty part of his palms.
The worries melted away as his world became a simple universe consisting of front post and rear sights. He let his breath whistle past his teeth. The tension drained from his limbs. His vision leaped forward towards the Pepsi cans perched along a two-by-four thirty yards away, then raced back to the front post.
Five cans and seven rounds of 230 grain full metal jacket with 6.2 grains of Unique nestled between round and primer. The summer breeze caught a whiff of Remington’s Nitro CLP lubricant. The gun’s slide sweated the synthetic oil above the slide stop and thumb safety. The grip safety locked tightly as he gently squeezed the trigger, feeling it break at four pounds.
Five shots and five brownish white clouds.
Several years ago he had determined Pepsi cans made the best explosions. Coca Cola was somewhat lackluster and Budweiser was simply too expensive for an afternoon with his guns.
He twisted, finding two spinner targets rated for up to .44 Magnum rounds. Two hollow sounding gongs and the slide locked open. Two smoke tendrils drifted from the shell ejector port and muzzle. His grip relaxed as he thumbed the magazine release just behind the trigger guard. The empty seven-round magazine dropped into his free hand. Without taking his eyes from the target range, he fed a full magazine into the magazine funnel and thumbed the slide stop. The slide slammed forward on the strength of an eighteen-pound spring.
Harper dropped to one knee, finding the B-27 human silhouette target. He dropped three rounds into a ragged cloverleaf configuration above where an eye should be. He twisted his body, bringing to focus a second B-27 less than ten yards distant. His last four rounds obliterated the X-ring. He sprang the magazine from the .45 and loaded a third one as he came to a stop in prone position.
