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Grimaldi glanced back at the BATF surveillance vehicle, then once again eyed the slain biker. The man was beyond being interrogated, but Grimaldi still found himself asking the foremost question on his mind in the wake of the ambush.
“No way you just stumbled across them,” he thought aloud. “You knew they were on stakeout. Who tipped you off?”
WALLACE “DUBBY” BYRNES, youngest of the three brothers who had followed their late father’s footsteps into the ranks of the American Freedom Movement, had banged up his knee when he’d skid-dropped his Husqvarna in the parking lot, but he ignored the pain as he clambered into the cab of the nearest of the two semis backed up to the loading dock. The keys were in the ignition, and he let out a joyous whoop as he started the engine.
“Hot damn!” he hollered triumphantly.
He’d done it! He’d helped steal a semi filled with enough guns and ammunition to handle a year’s worth of AFM recruits. Not only that—he’d been the one who’d taken it upon himself a few weeks ago to start dating a BATF dispatcher, figuring it would help determine the extent to which the Feds were on their trail. His brother Harlan and all the others back at the compound had thought he was nuts and mocked him for coming up with such a hare-brained scheme. This afternoon, though, that scheme had paid off when the dispatcher—who had no idea Dubby was with the AFM—had mentioned something about a pending militia bust in Georgetown. Dubby had convinced his brother they should hop on their bikes and rush over to check on things. Now here they were, riding to the rescue, and they’d done it!
Dubby couldn’t wait to see the look on his brothers’ faces when he told them the news. There’d be no more calling him Squirt. Not after this. From now on, they’d call him Dubby like everyone else.
The twenty-three-year-old biker’s euphoria was a bit premature. He may have taken over the wheel of the Mack truck, but there was still the matter of escaping from the parking lot and making it all the way back to the AFM’s mountain compound without getting caught. Dubby got his first reality check when the driver’s-side window shattered while he wrestled with the truck’s gearshift. The bullet whizzed past his face and lodged in the cab ceiling, but not before he’d been struck by a few shards of glass. Blood began to seep from gashes in his neck and cheek.
Neither wound was severe enough to take Dubby out of the fight, and he swore as he grabbed for the Uzi Eagle he’d used earlier to gun down the truck’s owner. He knocked loose the remaining glass in the window frame with the Eagle’s squat polymer butt, then shouted out into the night, “All right, who’s asking for it?”
JOHN KISSINGER COULD SEE that he’d missed the biker attempting to steal the Mack truck. The biker was leaning out of the line of fire, and Cowboy didn’t want to waste any more ammunition, so he turned his attention to the other truck. Bolan had neutralized the first guard trying to get inside the vehicle, but a second guard had yanked the body aside and climbed behind the wheel. Now the semi was pulling away from the loading dock, headed Kissinger’s way.
Kissinger propped his gun hand on the planter to steady his aim as he squinted past the glare of the headlights, keeping the driver in his sights. Once the truck had reached the exit, Kissinger pulled the trigger.
The windshield spiderwebbed as the round punched through the glass, striking the driver in the upper chest. The dead man’s foot slid off the accelerator, and the truck slowed to a stop halfway into the street, blocking the only exit from the lot.
“Whaddya know, something went right for a change,” Kissinger muttered.
The disabled truck blocked his view of the gunfight taking place between Bolan and the other guards, so Kissinger backtracked along the planter to his original position, hoping the biker would realized he’d been hemmed in and bail from the other truck. Before he could confirm whether or not the ploy had worked, Kissinger was distracted by the metallic plink of something bounding off the asphalt on the other side of the planter. Kissinger had been in enough firefights to know the sound.
Grenade.
Kissinger had no time to react before the projectile detonated. Half the planter disintegrated, as did a good portion of the stanchions holding up the massive sign he had taken cover beneath. With a cracking sound nearly as loud as that made by the grenade, the weakened posts collapsed under the weight of the sign.
Kissinger tried to roll clear as the marquee plummeted toward him, but the bottom edge caught him on the right arm and shoulder, knocking the gun from his hand. The next thing he knew, the Stony Man armorer was pinned to the ground. The air had been knocked from his lungs and a stabbing pain coursed through him. A blur of light crowded his field of vision, then Kissinger’s world was plunged into sudden darkness.
WHEN HE SAW that his colleague was in trouble, Bolan broke from cover and started toward the fallen sign, only to be driven back by gunfire from the two rogue guards still prowling the loading dock area. The Executioner crouched behind a late-model Lexus illuminated by a nearby streetlight. Bolan shot the light out, emptying the last round in his Beretta. He fished a spare 10-round clip from his pocket and quickly swapped magazines, then peered over the hood of the Lexus. He fired at one of the guards and sent him sprawling across the body of a vendor who already lay dead on the loading dock next to an overturned crateful of MAT 40 subguns.
The remaining guard had fled to the rear of the second semi, which was trying to squeeze past the first truck, stalled at the parking lot exit. The engine rumbled as Byrnes drove forward, and seconds later Bolan heard a screech of metal on metal as Byrnes brushed against the other truck. Undeterred, the militiaman drove on, taking out another section of the planter as he forged a new path to the street. From where he was standing, Bolan couldn’t see if Kissinger had been in the truck’s path.
Dubby Byrnes turned sharply once he reached the street, then gave the semi more gas. When he spotted Bolan, he veered the truck toward the Lexus. Bolan had no time to fire. He dived headlong to his right, landing hard on the sidewalk just as Byrnes’s semi clipped the front end of the Lexus and sent it caroming backward into the Volkswagen Passat parked behind it. Bolan’s instincts had just saved him from being crushed between the two vehicles. Still, he’d scraped his right elbow landing on the sidewalk, and the entire arm throbbed as he scrambled back to his feet.
Much as he wanted to check on Kissinger, Bolan knew that trying to stop the truck was his top priority. Dropping the Beretta’s foregrip, he clutched the pistol with both hands and circled the crumpled Lexus. He was immediately spotted by the security guard who’d climbed up into the back of the fleeing truck. The guard fished through the shipping crate nearest to him and came up with an M-68 frag grenade similar to the one that had taken Kissinger out of the battle earlier. He slipped his thumb through the release pin and was about to heave the projectile when Bolan stitched him across the chest with a 3-round volley of 9 mm Parabellum bullets. The guard dropped the grenade and keeled over backward, his heart shredded. Bolan wasn’t sure if the pin had been pulled on the grenade, but he once again went with his instincts and dived back behind the Lexus.
Once the grenade detonated, shrapnel ripped through the truck’s cargo much the same way Bolan’s M-61 had stirred things up back at the storage shed in Sykesville. The chain-reaction blasts were equally devastating. The truck’s walls turned into razor-sharp shards, and flaming chunks flew out in all directions, pelting everything within a fifty-yard radius. A flash fire quickly consumed the crated weapons and ammunition, triggering still more explosions. The Lexus Bolan was crouched behind rocked in place for a moment, then came to a rest. By the time he rose to his feet to survey the damage, the truck had been turned into a rolling inferno.
DUBBY BYRNES WAS THROWN forward by the first blasts, breaking ribs on the steering wheel before he smashed into the windshield, cracking the glass along with his skull. By the time he’d rebounded back into the driver’s seat, shrapnel had ripped through the backrest and pierced his leather jacket, nicking his spine and puncturing his right lung. Miraculously, he was still conscious, but the spinal trauma had left him paralyzed from the waist down, and when flames surged through the cab, he was unable to escape. His shrill scream was abruptly silenced when the fire roared up into the engine compartment and made contact with the fuel line. A final explosion—every bit as loud and powerful as that made by the grenade—obliterated the cab, putting Byrnes out of his misery.
THE STREET HAD FALLEN SILENT, but the din from the chain-reaction blasts still reverberated through Bolan’s skull. Half-deaf, he cautiously approached the ravaged truck. Flames still licked at the charred shell, sending thick clouds of smoke up into the night. An eerie haze filled the street, almost like a fog, mingling with the light snowfall. Bolan knew the driver could not have survived the explosion.
As the Executioner turned to make his way back to Kissinger, another vehicle slowly rolled into view through the haze, passing the ruined semi. Bolan raised his pistol but held his fire. It was Grimaldi in the panel truck.
Bolan slowly slid his gun back into his web holster and waved to get Grimaldi’s attention. The panel truck picked up speed, then slowed to a stop alongside him.
“The grenade launcher’s still in back here,” the Stony Man pilot called out to Bolan as he leaned across the front seat and threw open the passenger door. “How the hell did you turn that truck into toast?”
“I had their help,” Bolan conceded. He had to raise his voice, as the night had come alive with the screaming of sirens. He got in the truck and explained what had happened, then told Grimaldi, “Let’s get back to the hall. Cowboy’s down.”
Once they were within view of the fallen sign, Grimaldi pulled to a stop in front of the stalled semi. He and Bolan scrambled to the planter and carefully lifted the toppled marquee, then shoved it to one side so they could get to Kissinger. The armorer wasn’t moving, but he had a pulse and was breathing, however faintly. Bolan and Grimaldi both saw a thin crimson rivulet seeping from the corner of the man’s mouth.
“Internal bleeding,” Grimaldi murmured.
Bolan nodded. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the flashing rooflights of several approaching vehicles.
“Let’s hope one of those is an ambulance,” he said, turning his attention back to Kissinger. “He’s hanging on by a thread.”
3
McLean, Virginia
Three hundred yards from the lean-to rooftop where Edgar Byrnes lay peering through the night-vision scope of his M-136 AT-4 rocket launcher, Roberta Williamson was finishing another routine workday on the sixth floor of CIA headquarters. Yes, she’d put in overtime, but that was the norm for her these days. She’d only been at the Langley facility ten months, and she still felt the need to do extra work to prove herself worthy of the promotion she’d received after five years of field work with the Agency’s Paris bureau. She was now an intercept analyst for the Company’s counterterrorism division, part of a thirteen-person team charged with ferreting out communication links between al Qaeda sleeper cells in the States and their overseas contacts. It was demanding work, but Williamson loved the challenge.
For Williamson, the biggest downside to her job was its sedentary nature. She’d put on twelve pounds since reporting to Langley, and long hours at the desk had given her lower-back problems, as well. She knew more exercise would help on both fronts and she tried, whenever possible, to leave time at the end of the day to do some stretches and then jog around some portion of the facility’s 130-acre grounds. This night it was snowing outside, so Williamson figured she had an easy excuse to skip the workout. When her phone rang, however, she suspected her boss had other ideas. She smiled ruefully as she picked up the receiver. “Williamson here.”
“Hey, Robbi. It’s your conscience.”
“I figured as much,” Williamson replied.
“So, whaddya say? Up for a jog?”
She chuckled, “Do I have a choice?”
“Be right there.”
“Bastard,” Williamson teased before hanging up the phone. She was still smiling as she pushed away from her desk and kicked off her pumps.
Her “conscience” was former Army Colonel Felix Garber, the fifty-seven-year-old California native who’d recommended her for the job with counterterrorism and had served as her mentor these past ten months. Before joining the Company, Garber had put in twenty years with the XVIII Airborne Corps, concluding his service as the officer in charge of demolition operations in Khamisiyah following the Gulf War. He was now deputy director of the CIA’s counterterrorism division, and Williamson suspected it was only a matter of time before he took over the top position. She and Garber had worked alongside each other several times when the colonel had come to Paris on assignment, and they’d struck up a friendship based on their mutual passion for country music, haute cuisine and the Los Angeles Lakers. Working in adjacent offices now, they’d drawn even closer the past few months, and another incentive Williamson had for losing weight was her anticipation of the day when their relationship led to the bedroom and Garber would have his first look at her without her clothes on.
She had changed into her jogging sweats and was tying her running shoes when Garber appeared in her doorway, wearing rubberized biker shorts and a sleeveless ski vest. He was in good shape and had a better physique than most men half his age.
“You want to go running dressed like that?” Williamson said. “You’ll freeze!”
“Wimp,” Garber said with a grin. “It’s not cold out—it’s brisk.”
“Yeah, right.” She laughed.
As they left the office and headed down the hall, Garber floated the idea of having dinner together after their run. He mentioned a new sports bar that had just opened up across the river in D.C. They’d have the Lakers game on, he told her, and their crab cakes had just gotten a good write-up in the Post.
“Can’t say no to a good crab cake,” Williamson said.
They were waiting for the elevator when Garber snapped his fingers.
“Damn!” he groaned. “I forgot to update Tangiers on that cable intercept we just cracked.”
“Go ahead and fax them,” Williamson told him. “I’ll hold the elevator and get in a few stretches.”
“Be right back,” Garber said.
Williamson watched Garber head back down the hallway, admiring his legs. And that ass, she thought to herself, smiling.
The colonel had unlocked his office door and was heading into his office when a sudden explosion shook the building. The floor beneath Williamson’s feet shuddered with so much force she lost her balance and bounced off the elevator doors, then fell as if struck by an invisible force. By the time she’d landed, the floor had stabilized, but a deafening alarm had gone off in the hallway and the ceiling-mounted safety sprinklers had been activated. Water showered down on Williamson as she slowly sat up, mind racing, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
Like Garber, Williamson was a California native and her first thought was that there’d been an earthquake. But then she smelled smoke and heard the unmistakable crackling sound of racing flames. Alarmed, she glanced down the hallway leading back to her office.
“No!” she gasped.
The inner walls of her office, as well as Garber’s and the office next to hers, had all but disintegrated, and a portion of the ceiling had collapsed into the flames engulfing the corridor. A woman’s body hung eerily out over the edge of the overhead cavity, then tumbled down to the hallway floor, joining three other corpses strewed about like discarded dolls. The fire had begun to devour the victims, and Williamson’s stomach clenched at her first whiff of burning flesh.
“Felix!” she called out, staggering to her feet.
She cried out Garber’s name again as she tore off her sweatshirt and soaked it beneath the ceiling sprinklers. Pressing the makeshift mask to her face, she headed down the hall. Smoke stung her eyes as she leaned over the first body she came to—Roger Olsen, a colleague she’d shared coffee with in the cafeteria just a few hours ago. The man’s clothes were torn, and he was bleeding from deep cuts sustained when he’d crashed through the office wall that now lay smoldering in broken chunks on the floor around him. His jaw had been dislocated and his mouth hung open, slack and off-center. His eyes were open but there was no life in them.
“No,” Williamson repeated, her voice reduced to a hoarse whisper.
The next two bodies she passed were in even worse condition, but neither they nor Olsen’s corpse adequately prepared her for the horror that awaited her when she came upon the remains of her mentor.
Felix Garber’s office had taken the brunt of the 84 mm warhead fired from Edgar Byrnes’s AT-4 rocket launcher. When he’d returned to his office to send his fax, Garber had walked directly into the spalling effect achieved after the rocket had penetrated the outer wall of the building. Garber had been killed instantly and then cast back out into the hallway by an incendiary barrage of projectile fragments that had left his body charred and mutilated. His right arm was missing along with half his left leg, and his torso had been rent open and seared beyond recognition. His nearly severed head hung twisted from his shoulders in such a way that even though he lay on his back his face was turned to the floor.
Williamson’s legs weakened and she dropped to her knees, unable to take her eyes off the grisly remains. She lowered the dampened sweatshirt and opened her mouth as if to scream, but all that came forth was a strained mewling. She became oblivious to the rank stench of burning flesh and the ominous approach of flames consuming those areas in the hall where the safety sprinklers had been rendered inoperable.
Someone appeared at the far end of the hallway and called out to Williamson, but she remained transfixed, overwhelmed by the horror around her. Two co-workers—men who’d rushed up to the sixth floor after feeling the explosion—scrambled down the corridor and pulled Williamson to her feet. She numbly allowed them to lead her beyond range of the flames. It was only when they’d reached the elevators that she found her voice. When she spoke, however, it seemed to her as her words were coming from somewhere far away, being mouthed by someone else.
“Who?” she moaned. “Who did this?”
“EASY, BOY,” Edgar Byrnes called out as he slipped on his backpack and opened the corral gate at Conlon Farm. “Easy, Jefferson.”
The roan horse had been spooked by the rocket launcher and neighed loudly as it clomped in circles around the corral. Other animals were making a racket inside the lean-to, and several chickens had squawked their way outside and were scurrying in all directions. Byrnes strode toward Jefferson, holding his arms out before him. In one hand he held a salt lick, in the other a carrot.
“Come on, Jefferson,” he pleaded. “We don’t have time for this.”
The horse charged blindly past. Byrnes turned and jogged counterclockwise in hopes he could intercept Jefferson during the horse’s next lap around the corral. He continued to call out, trying to calm the beast. Finally Jefferson slowed to a trot and then came to a stop in front of Byrnes, choosing the carrot.
“Good boy.”
As he waited for Jefferson to consume the snack, Byrnes glanced through the woods. It had stopped snowing, and he could clearly see flames spewing from the sixth floor of CIA headquarters. A trio of helicopters hovered above the carnage, searchlights raking the surrounding grounds. Byrnes knew it would only be a matter of time before the search widened to include the farm.
“Okay, boy,” Byrnes said once Jefferson had finished the carrot. “It’s time.”
Byrnes had already saddled the horse and strapped on the reins. He slid one foot into the nearest stirrup and hoisted himself up onto Jefferson’s back, then slapped the beast’s flank with the flat of his palm.
“Let’s go!”
Jefferson bolted from the corral and carried Byrnes deep into the woods leading away from the CIA facilities. Byrnes had ridden this stretch countless times over the past few weeks, including the previous night, when he’d gone to pick up the weapon from his AFM contacts. The route was ingrained in Jefferson’s mind and the horse retraced it at full gallop, threading between trees with relative ease. The woods were dark, but the horse forged on unerringly.
Once they reached the cloverleaf ramp leading under the George Washington Expressway to Turkey Run Park, Byrnes slowed Jefferson to a trot. There were a few other riders out, as well. The militiaman composed himself, then joined them, expressing puzzlement.
“I heard some kind of crash,” he told the others.
“Something going down at Langley,” one of the other riders explained, pointing out the helicopters in the distance.
“Sounded like a bomb,” another rider said with a trace of anxiety. “I hope it’s not terrorists.”
“It’s probably nothing,” Byrnes reassured the other man. “That place is like a fortress. No way is anybody going to be able to attack it.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Me, too,” Byrnes said. “Hell, if somebody can attack CIA in their own backyard, nobody’s safe.”
4
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Senator Gregory Walden had just nodded off to sleep when the phone rang on the nightstand beside him. The vice chairman of the Joint House-Senate Intelligence Committee groaned and opened one eye, inspecting the luminous readout on the digital clock next to the phone. It was nearly midnight.
“What now?” Walden groaned. The senator had already been interrupted twice tonight, once by a Post reporter looking for the inside scoop on confirmation hearings for the President’s latest Homeland Security nominee, the other time by an aide who was having trouble transcribing some notes Walden had barked into his Dictaphone before leaving the office. He reached for the phone as it continued to ring. Beside him, Nikki, his wife for the past seven years, stirred beneath the sheets.
“Gregory, would you please get that already, for crying out—”
“I just did!” Walden snapped at her. He sat up in bed and vented further into the phone, yelling, “This better be goddamn important!”
There was a pause on the line, then a woman replied to him in a soft voice void of emotion. It was Joan VanderMeer. “Greg, it’s me. I know it’s late, but—”
“I’ll call you right back,” Walden interrupted. He hung up the phone and swung his feet to the floor and rubbed his fists against his temples.
Nikki turned to him, her peroxide hair matted flat on the side she’d been sleeping on. The covers clung as tightly to her silicone breasts as the skin did to her cheeks after her most recent facelift.
“What is it?” she asked.
“The world’s coming to an end,” Walden deadpanned as he stabbed his feet into his bedroom slippers. “Go back to sleep.”
“Always with the sarcasm,” Nikki complained.
“I love you, too, honeybunch,” Walden said flatly. He grabbed his robe from the overstuffed chair next to the bed and put it on as he headed out of the room. The November elections were eight long months away. Walden wondered how the hell he was going to keep the divorce on hold that long. He’d come to hate his wife with a passion, but he knew this year’s campaign would be a tight one, and he couldn’t afford to lose votes by presenting himself as anything other than happily married.
The Waldens lived on the eighth floor of an upscale high-rise located just off the river between Drexel University and the train station the senator had made heavy use of years ago when he was new to Capitol Hill and needed a cheap way to commute between Philadelphia and his office in Washington. Nowadays he could afford a chauffeur. He could also afford the two million dollars’ worth of professional redecoration the apartment had just undergone. The completed results would be featured in the November issue of Architectural Digest, just in time for the election. The photo shoot had already taken place, and Nikki, who’d made most of the decorating choices, had made sure to worm her way into a few of the shots, another reason Walden felt the need to keep up pretenses. Of course, since the photo shoot, Nikki had changed her mind about a few things and had brought the decorators back in for a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of “tweaking.” And she wasn’t done yet. The interior decorator was due back in the morning with swatches for the dining room’s third paint job in as many months.
As he dialed a number on one of his never-ending supply of prepaid cell phones, Walden stared at an obscure Jackson Pollock painting that hung over the den fireplace. Walden hated the piece; to him it looked like something a second-grader had painted. Nikki, of course, thought it was a masterpiece. Which was good for her, Walden thought, because it was probably the most valuable thing she’d be taking away from the marriage when he threw her out after the election.
“Okay, which is it?” Walden said once VanderMeer had picked up. “The Feds are on to you or there was a problem with the gun heist.”
“The gun show,” VanderMeer told him. “They got hold of both semis but ran into a buzz saw trying to get away.”
“You want to translate that for me?” Walden said. He could already feel his blood pressure rising. First that business at the fantasy camp in Sykesville, and now this. This bungling not only jeopardized his master plan, but it also increased the chance that his cover would be blown. If that happened, he would be as good as dead.
