by David Wood
Instead of trying to meet the charge head on, the kidnapper bent down behind the unmoving woman and reached over the back of the chair to wrap an arm around her throat. “Back off or she’s toast.”
The suddenness of the move jolted Avery to consciousness. Her eyes went wide, and she jerked in the chair, but her hands and legs remained fixed in place.
Stone managed to stop a few paces away, but nothing about his manner evinced defeat. “You’ll never make it out of here with her. We called 911. Told them to look for the guys with the wheelchair. You might be able to slip out of here before the police lock down the exits, but only if you leave her and go.”
It was only a partial lie, Sievers knew. They had not called 911, but someone in the Library surely had, and if the police had not already shut down the whole complex, they soon would.
The kidnapper’s bravado was fast evaporating. “If you don’t back the hell up, I’ll kill her. I swear it.”
“Taking her won’t accomplish anything,” Stone went on. “We can’t give you the Spear. It’s already been turned over to the CIA. We couldn’t give it to you even if we wanted to. It’s out of our hands. Your only move here is to cut and run.”
Another lie, but Stone seemed to know exactly what to say to produce the desired results. The arm around Avery’s neck relaxed if only by a degree or two. The man’s resolve was nearly gone.
Stone turned to Kasey. “Let’s give him some room to think.” He gestured for her to move aside and then nodded to Sievers as well. When they were all pressed against one wall, Stone added, “You might want to leave by another door.”
The man’s eyes flashed dangerously as he looked at Stone, then at his fallen comrade who lay unmoving in the middle of the passage. Sievers thought there might be a last little bit of steel in him, that he would find his nerve and call Stone’s bluff, but then something broke in the man. He shoved the wheelchair toward them like a battering ram, then dashed past as if fearful that one of them might try to tackle him. A moment later he was sprinting down the tunnel, heading back toward the Jefferson Building.
Stone deftly caught the chair before it could crash into him and immediately went to work freeing Avery from her bonds. Sievers saw that they had tied her wrists to the armrests with shoelaces. As soon as her arms were loose, she threw them around Stone, embracing him like a long lost friend.
“It’s okay,” Stone said, returning the embrace. “You’re safe now.”
Kasey leaned over her as well. “Are you hurt?”
Avery shook her head then winced. “Ow. Maybe a little.”
“Can you walk?” Stone asked.
“I think so.”
He pulled her to her feet. “We need to get out of here before the police stop us.”
“How did you know?” Sievers asked.
“Which part?” Stone replied, not looking away from Avery. When she was standing unaided, he gestured in the direction of the Adams Building. He moved at a fast walk, but not so fast that anyone would give him a second look. The others followed without comment, and Sievers had to jog to catch up.
“All of it. How did you know they’d come this way? How did you know they would use a wheelchair? And how in the hell did you know what to say to make him give up like that?”
“I knew they would use a wheelchair because it was the only possible way to move someone off the premises against their will without attracting attention. I knew they’d come this way because the Adams Building was close, with fewer witnesses, and has a wheelchair accessible exit with easy access to the street.”
“And the Spear? How did you know that’s what they were after?”
“They need it to crack the code in the diary,” Avery said, her voice sounding stronger.
“And it was the only possible motive for them to come after us. The only reason to take a hostage is for negotiations. The Spear is the only thing we have that they could possibly want, and they’ve only just realized they need it. They planned this whole thing on the fly, and Avery just happened to be an easy target because she was alone.”
“You figured all that out?”
“Things happen the way they do because they can’t happen any other way. When you see how all the pieces are positioned, there’s only one possible outcome.”
Sievers scowled. He had heard Stone say similar things before, though he had never actually seen the man’s fatalistic philosophy produce any sort of meaningful outcomes. Stone had guessed right, but what impressed Sievers most was not his accuracy, but his certitude and the quickness with which he had analyzed the situation and developed the correct response. Maybe there was something to it after all.
Avery stopped suddenly. “We can’t leave yet.”
“We got what we came for,” Stone said, handing over her phone. “You snapped a picture of the page with the code.”
“What if there’s more to it?”
“The code is the missing piece. It will tell us where we need to go.”
They reached the terminus of the tunnel and ascended to street level. Avery appeared to have completely recovered from the brief ordeal, and easily kept pace, almost vibrating with frenetic urgency. Sievers scanned the faces of pedestrians moving along the sidewalk, looking for suspicious activity, but if the kidnappers had accomplices waiting outside, they were well-concealed. The quartet hastened to Independence Avenue where Kasey flagged down a cab, promising the driver double the meter if he could get them to their hotel “like a pizza”—in thirty minutes or less—and just that quickly they were on their way.
As the hired car zipped through traffic, Avery began recounting everything she had read. Sievers was only half-listening, his attention mostly focused on checking their six for signs of a tail. While there was no evidence of pursuit, he did not relax his vigilance but he did catch some of Avery’s tale.
He was intrigued by the Patton connection, but the idea that the future of the free world might be tied up with some bit of trivia bordered on the ridiculous. Yet, they had been targeted, and that meant the people in the cab with him were not the only ones who believed it. The whole situation was so far outside his normal experience that the only way to cope was to stick to what he knew best.
As they pulled onto the I-66, he took mental note of the other cars merging into the flow of traffic. Their driver, evidently intent on earning his bonus, floored the gas pedal and slipped from lane to lane in search of the path of least resistance. Sievers watched to see if any of the other cars would follow suit. None did.
“Why did he call it ‘the Devil’s Gift’?” Kasey asked. “Does that mean something? Is it another relic, like the Spear?”
Avery shook her head uncertainly. “I’ve never heard of anything like that.”
Sievers, satisfied that they were not being followed, joined in the conversation. “Patton was a devout Christian, even though he believed in reincarnation. Maybe he had a dream in which he thought the Devil came to him and made some kind of bargain.”
“The language is very precise,” Stone said. “He said the Devil gave him the Gift, whatever it was. I don’t think he was speaking figuratively. At least not about the Gift. Someone that he called ‘the Devil’ visited him and gave him something. Everything about the surrounding passage suggests a tangible object. Something that is hidden. Something that he allowed to remain hidden, but which he planned to use to launch his political career.”
Avery sat up straight. “A buried treasure. He said someone might find it while looking for a different treasure.”
“Patton came from old money,” Sievers said. “And married into even more. He was already wealthy.”
Kasey laughed. “Right. Because rich people know they have enough.”
“He was more interested in glory than money,” countered Sievers. “Besides, if it was a treasure, and money was what he wanted, he wouldn’t have just left it there.”
“We’ll know more once we crack that code,” Stone said.
Although he r
emained skeptical, Sievers felt a growing sense of anticipation as they raced along the busy access road that provided a straight shot to the airport. He wanted to know as badly as the rest of them if only to justify his decision to let Stone continue the crazy quest.
Twenty-eight minutes after leaving the Library of Congress, they exited onto Aviation Drive, but despite the NASCAR-worthy performance of their driver, the journey ground to a near-complete stop less than a mile from their destination. Sievers could see their hotel in the distance, but between them and it was an unbroken line of barely moving cars.
Stone grew increasingly restive as they crawled closer. He craned his head forward, peering over the driver’s shoulder to get a better look at what lay ahead.
“Turn us around,” he said, his voice filled with grave urgency. “Take us to the airport.”
Before anyone could respond, Sievers spied the reason for Stone’s abrupt command. Just a hundred yards away, blocking the entrance to the hotel parking lot, was a police car, its top mounted lights flashing red and blue. Beyond it waited at least a half-dozen more patrol cars and unmarked vehicles, all of them casting the same familiar light show.
Something bad had happened at the hotel, and as much as Sievers wanted to believe that it was merely a coincidence, that the police presence was in no way related to what they were doing, he knew better. While they had been foiling the kidnappers at the Library of Congress, another team of bad guys had hit their hotel.
Avery let out a low moan of grief. “Oh, no. The Spear.”
Stone shook his head. “They have it.”
“What do we do now?”
For once, Stone had no answer.
CHAPTER 17
Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
Although the sun was still bright in the western sky, Tam Broderick and Greg Johns crossed the Paso del Norte International Bridge into Juarez under a dark cloud of defeat. Kasey Kim had called from Washington D.C., and the news was dire indeed.
Tam was relieved that Kasey and Stone had thwarted Avery’s abduction, but that was about the only good thing that happened. The Dominion now had everything they needed to set Destiny in motion, and the Myrmidons didn’t even know what the plan was. Stone believed that he might have a way for them to close the knowledge gap, but the mere fact that her people had been in harm’s way, and in the nation’s capital no less, put Tam in a foul mood.
There were, however, two developments that gave Tam reason for hope.
The first bit of good news was that the analysts at Langley had put names to several of the faces Greg had captured on video during his extra-vehicular excursion on the Riesenrad. The men who had met with Oleg Samsonov were Americans—from Texas, no less—in the employ of an El Paso businessman named Roger Lavelle. Tam recognized that name immediately. Lavelle was the suspected Dominion operative flagged in the intercepted phone call that had alerted them to the existence of Destiny. Lavelle had loose ties to the Kingdom Church—the organization that had once advanced the Dominion’s agenda in North America—but had escaped prosecution in the roll-up of church leadership following the Atlantis crisis. It was further proof that they were on the right trail. Of even greater interest was the fact that Lavelle’s import-export business was closely affiliated with a manufacturing concern on the other side of the river—a maquiladora owned by one Guillermo Esperanza.
The second development was that Esperanza had agreed to meet with them.
Tam was still undecided about whether this was a good thing. She had identified herself as a State department investigator—which was almost the truth—conducting a follow-up investigation into the border incident. Tam felt certain that identifying themselves as government agents would trigger a noticeable reaction if Esperanza was Dominion, though she thought this very unlikely. Everything she read about the man confirmed Waller’s assessment of the Mexican businessman. A self-made millionaire turned philanthropist, Esperanza seemed more interested in enriching his fellow countrymen than his own bank account. He had actually demurred from seeking political office on several occasions, claiming that he could do more good as a private citizen, and despite his popular success, he had not yet formally declared his intention to seek the highest office in the land. In fact, while he was critical of Mendoza’s policies and inaction, he had not joined the chorus of voices calling for the president’s resignation.
Tam’s gut told her that the businessman was an unwitting dupe in the conspiracy, Lavelle’s puppet, and not a willful participant. If she was wrong, if Esperanza was part of the Dominion, perhaps even the architect of Destiny, then she and Greg might be walking into a trap.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
The differences between the two cities on either side of the river were not as dramatic as Tam would have expected. But for the border crossing, she would not have guess that they had left El Paso, much less entered another country. Juarez was a modern city, with new construction more in evidence than the old Colonial style Tam had been prepared for.
They drove along the highway, past modern concrete and glass buildings, warehouses and factories. There were a few protesters milling around the border checkpoint, but nothing like the images coming out of Mexico City. Aside from a heavy police presence along the roadside—more ad hoc quick response staging areas than anything else—there was little outward indication that Ciudad Juarez was the smoldering powder keg that might lead to the collapse of the Mexican government, but Tam knew of the city’s reputation for violence. The North American Free Trade Agreement had brought prosperity to Juarez, and with the infusion of wealth and growth had come the drug cartels. A too-porous border and the waning power of South American organized crime had made the border town a fertile field for the criminal element to take root, with terrifying results. Juarez, literally a stone’s throw from American soil, had a well-deserved reputation as the most violent city on earth.
The wave of terror had somewhat abated from its peak in 2010, at which time there had been on average, four homicides per day. Most of the violence had been the result of rivalries between the different drug cartels fighting for control of the profitable smuggling routes into the U.S. but many of the victims had been innocents, particularly women, swept up in the vortex of brutality. Hundreds had vanished, some sold into slavery, others murdered, their bodies never found.
The chaos had spread outward from the border region like a metastasizing tumor. The so-called Drug Wars had been fought in every corner of the country, with many rural areas completely under the control of the drug lords. In many places, the local villagers had taken up arms, becoming resistance fighters of a different stripe. The situation had degenerated to the point where intelligence analysts in the U.S. Defense department believed that a total collapse of the Mexican government was imminent. That had gotten the attention of the American people, if only because a failed state in Mexico would result in millions of refugees swarming across the river. The response, predictably, had been driven by an impulse toward isolationism and xenophobia, with calls to harden the border and deploy the National Guard.
President Mendoza’s initiatives to root out corruption and crush the cartels had been even less successful than the world at large believed. This latest tragedy seemed like the opening salvo in a new campaign of kidnapping and murder, an escalation of violence with the potential to bring about the fulfillment of the Pentagon’s doom-and-gloom-prophecy.
The onboard GPS guided them to Esperanza’s factory complex, situated on the Boulevard Juan Pablo II, a six-lane highway—three lanes running in either direction, divided by a tree-lined median—which ran parallel to the border. As they rode along, Tam found herself wondering if the bus carrying the students had come this way. A few miles later, Greg pulled their car into the parking lot of a modern, but generic looking structure that was part office complex, part factory.
Before leaving the car behind, they gunned up—Tam with her Makarov, Greg with an equally compact Glock 23. Technically speaking, the weap
ons had been smuggled across the border, a very serious criminal offense, particularly in Mexico, but what they had done could hardly have been called smuggling. A reasonably thorough search would have easily found them, stuffed up under the dashboard. Tam knew from experience however that tired border cops had better things to do than scrutinize every car that came through, particularly when there was no hint of suspicious activity.
The factory was humming with the noise of industry, but the side of the building devoted to administration was eerily quiet, as if everyone had already gone home for the day.
“Mr. Esperanza is expecting you,” the woman at the reception desk said in English. She rose and came around to guide them to an executive elevator. The ride up was brief; the building only had three stories. They exited into a small sparsely furnished sitting area, but the receptionist ushered them directly through a door at the back of the room and into the office of Guillermo Esperanza.
Like the sitting room, Esperanza’s office was a no-frills affair. The furniture—desk, chairs, a sofa along the wall—were about on par with what might be found in a low-rent doctor’s waiting room or a budget hotel; adequate, but hardly luxurious. Tam suspected this was not the primary location from which Esperanza oversaw his empire, but rather a place where he could meet with his facilities managers.
The man himself was seated behind the sturdy utilitarian desk. Esperanza looked to be in his early forties, stout with a full head of black hair, combed straight back from a high forehead. His profile reminded Tam of the figures carved on the wall of Mayan temples. He had a weary look about him, but when they entered, he managed a wan smile as he rose to greet them, offering his hand even before speaking. “Welcome,” he said in effusive, mildly-accented English. “Thank you so much for coming.”
It was an odd thing to say since Tam had been the one to request the meeting. She chalked it up to language differences. She sensed no guile in his manner. If Esperanza was Dominion, he was hiding it well. She beamed back at him like they were old friends. “Thanks for having us. I know you’re busy, so I won’t take too much of your time.”
