by Jack Mars
There was no sense waiting. A real war could break out at any time. If that happened, they might suddenly decide to seal the border. Also, at some point, someone in the public was going to realize that the president was missing. When that happened, all bets were off.
He took North Derby Road headed east right along the border. At the end of the road, he turned left on Beebe Road. The post office was on the corner on his left.
There was a Canada Border Service Agency facility, right at the border, where Beebe Road linked up with Canada Route 247. The offices were in a couple of small buildings, set back from the road. One of them looked like it used to be a bank, with a little drive-through window under a canopy out front. You didn’t even really need to stop there.
This entrance to Canada was an open secret. For the locals who crossed back and forth between countries all day, often running minor errands, it was a matter of course. There was no United States Customs station here.
A few miles to the east, there was a more stringent border control marking the line between Derby Line, Vermont, and Rock Island, Quebec. But even over there, crossing was no big deal. The border control was right on Main Street. And Lawrence knew that in the little town, there were people living in the United States on one side of the street, while their neighbors across the street lived in Canada.
At one time, there was even one post office in the town, the only international post office in the world. Canadians entered through one door, Americans through another. There was a line down the middle of the floor they weren’t supposed to step over.
Just to the east of that was the real customs and border control station on Interstate 91. Thousands of tourists on the highway stopped and did their border crossing there. Sometimes their cars were searched for contraband. Sometimes they got hassled. And little did they know, crossing over there was entirely voluntary.
Kevin Lawrence chose to cross over here. One day they might put concrete barriers here and fences with razor wire, but in the Year of Our Lord 2005, the crossing was still wide open. And that was the way he liked it.
A white and green SUV of the Canadian Border Patrol was parked under the canopy at the little pull-in area. As he passed, Kevin Lawrence raised a hand and waved at the Canadian border officer leaning against the SUV. The man waved back.
And just like that Lawrence Keller and his doppelganger, Kevin Lawrence, were across the border and in a different country.
He was in a car that was nearly invisible, with Vermont plates, and with a Vermont driver’s license. He was two hours from Montreal, a major city with 1.8 million people in the city, and 3.5 million in the metropolitan area. Montreal was a great city, and a great place to be anonymous, maybe even to disappear.
Kevin Lawrence kept a little apartment in town, a pied-à-terre , a “foot on the ground,” as the French might say. And Kevin Lawrence did speak a little French left over from his high school and college days.
Lawrence Keller took a deep breath as he drove north. He had ditched his cell phone this morning, tossing it out the window near the border between Maryland and Delaware. Let them trace it to that location if they could, some grassy terrain along the side of I-95, hundreds of miles south of here.
Ah. All the trouble was behind him now.
He was going to be okay.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
8:15 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
Potomac Towers
Arlington, Virginia
“A little more wine?” she said.
Luke nodded. “A splash. Why not?”
He was at Trudy Wellington’s one-bedroom apartment on the eighth floor of a high-rise development across the water from downtown DC. There was no access to the outside from here, but the tall windows almost made it seem like there was.
From where he stood, he could see a panoramic sweep of the Potomac River heading down to Reagan National. One after another, ceaselessly, the fat-bellied commercial jet planes came upriver and made their slow descents to the runway. Luke could see a line of them glinting in the fading sunlight, all the way out to the horizon, waiting their turn to land. It was a busy airport.
Beyond the airport was the raging torrent of traffic on the eastern loop of the Beltway, where it linked with Interstate 95 on the south side of the city. The day was ending and people had their lights on. From here, the red taillights of the northbound traffic looked like lava flowing.
She came in from the tiny kitchen with a bottle of chilled German white wine. Liebfraumilch. He had enough German to translate: mother’s milk. Luke had never tasted it before, but it was good. Zesty, fruity, but not so sweet as to taste like juice. It went down easy.
Trudy had changed into a pair of pink sweatpants and a flimsy blue T-shirt. She must have had that shirt since junior high school. It had been worn and washed so many times it was starting to become see-through. It had a peeling iron-on decal of Betty Boop on the front. Betty was bending over to smell a rose, and showing a lot of leg.
So nice read the caption at the bottom.
Trudy’s hair was down. She poured another splash of the wine into his glass. Luke was in trouble.
“Thank you,” he said. “You’re a very good host.”
She smiled and poured some more into her own glass.
He was here. It had happened. There wasn’t any way around it right now. He was due back in the SRT offices at one a.m. for a final briefing with his team, gear up, and then on the chopper by three a.m. They were going to hit the target in the sleepy hours before dawn. There was no real surprise involved. It was just circadian rhythms. Even professionals, trained to expect and defend against an assault, often couldn’t stay alert through the middle of the night.
But in the late afternoon, he had found himself so tired that there was no way he was going to make the long drive back out to the Eastern Shore. Could he have gotten a hotel room and expensed it? Sure, he probably could have. But he was exhausted and he was no longer thinking straight. So he went down to the SRT locker room, turned off the lights and fell asleep on one of the benches.
Sometime later, she had come in and woke him up. His eyes opened to her standing over him. He was in pain again, the pills having worn off while he was asleep.
“What are you doing, silly?” she said.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Taking a nap?”
“You can’t sleep here,” she said. “It’s no good. You won’t get any rest, and you have a mission in the morning.”
“I know. But I can’t go all the way home. It’s a three-hour round trip.”
“You can come to my place,” she said. “You can sleep on the couch. It’ll be a lot more comfortable than this. Better yet, I’ll let you have the bed.”
It was reasonable, of course. And it was the entryway to a very slippery slope. Now he was sliding down, headed for the bottom, no way to stop or even slow down. He was still beyond tired. The wine was going to his head. Becca wasn’t speaking to him. Worse than that, Becca had accused him of murder. He was lying to her about his missions. She was forcing him to do this. It was hard to swallow.
Meanwhile, Trudy knew everything about the missions. She didn’t judge them. And Trudy was beautiful. More than beautiful, she looked…
Delicious.
He knew this was wrong. He was making excuses for his behavior. He had a new baby. He should just go. Go anywhere, to a hotel, sleep in the car, an alleyway, wherever. He had carried out missions where he was even more exhausted than this. That’s what they made Dexedrine for.
He focused on her TV set. It was a large flat-screen mounted on a faux brick wall. The brick was a nice touch somehow. The apartment was well-designed. He had to admit that. For what it was, he liked it. There wasn’t much to it, but it was modern, spare, very hip. He liked her taste in furniture, and the long red splotch of a painting hanging on one wall. For an instant, he wondered if the place came furnished or if Trudy had picked all this stuff out.
CNN was showing on the TV.
A man was on there, of indeterminate age. He had a beard, long hair, and bruises on his face. He wore a loose-fitting button-up short-sleeve shirt, almost like a Hawaiian shirt. The shirt was dirty, as though he had been wearing it for weeks. He was in a grassy place, and people behind him were staring at him. He was shouting something and waving his arms.
Earlier Today the caption at the bottom read, Washington, DC.
A smooth female voice spoke over the video. “This was the scene this afternoon at Lafayette Park in Washington, DC, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House grounds.”
“David Barrett is dead!” the man shouted. “The president is dead! They took him! I saw it. His cab driver is dead. I gave him the cab!”
“This man, thought to be homeless and identified only as Crazy Joe by long-term denizens of the park, claims to have seen President David Barrett get into a taxicab late last night, just before the mysterious attack on the White House. In fact, he claims he was going to take the taxi, but let President Barrett have it as a gesture of respect. He also claims the taxi was driven by Jahjeet Brar, the cab driver found murdered near the White House early this morning. President Barrett has not been seen in public for two days, but White House officials have been clear that he is alive and well.”
On the screen, video appeared of three large men in suits walking Crazy Joe through the park toward a waiting black SUV. Crazy Joe tried to shake their grip on his arms, but they held him tight. They put him in the open back seat and pushed his head down so it wouldn’t hit the roof of the car.
The female voice continued. “The man called Crazy Joe was later seen accompanied by what are believed to be plainclothes officers of the DC Metropolitan or perhaps the Capitol police.”
Now a new image appeared. It was of a middle-aged white woman with long dreadlocked hair. She wore a tie-dyed T-shirt in bright colors. She held a small sign that said IMPEACH BARRETT.
“Joe is a very nice man,” she said. “He has never hurt a soul, and is sometimes targeted and victimized by others. He is always welcome here in the park. Obviously, we prefer him when he’s on his medication, but we love him and put our arms around him however he chooses to be.”
Luke gestured at the TV. Trudy was standing very close to him now.
“While I’m out getting killed tomorrow, I think you should find that guy. Looks like DC Metro has him.”
Gently, she took the wine glass out of his hand.
“Crazy Joe? Why would I want to find him?”
Luke was looking down into her eyes now. He was much taller than she was. The slippery slope just got steeper and even more slippery. And he was falling.
“He might know something we don’t.”
She smiled and licked her lips. “I doubt it. There are a lot of crazy people out there. There’s going to be a lot of crackpot conspiracy theories.”
Their bodies were nearly pressing together now. He felt the animal heat coming from her. He wanted to rip her threadbare shirt apart. Alarm bells rang in his head.
Red alert! Red alert! Red alert!
He leaned in for a kiss.
And stopped.
“I can’t do this,” he said. “I’ve got a wife. We have a new baby.”
Trudy smiled, but her eyes were hard.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. You’re not my prisoner.”
He nodded and took a deep breath. Suddenly, the full weight of his exhaustion hit him. “Okay. I really should get some sleep.”
She gestured at the long couch.
“I’ll get you a couple of pillows.”
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
June 28
4:05 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time
Above US Route 250
Inside the National Radio Quiet Zone
Cheat Bridge, West Virginia
“ETA six minutes, gentlemen,” the pilot said.
Luke glanced out the window. It was dark, black, the deepest part of the night.
The roadway snaked below them like a ribbon, cutting through the dense forest on either side. The mountains undulated away into the distance.
He felt that old trickle of fear, of adrenaline, of excitement. He felt alive and alert. Jazzed. The Dexedrine he had popped twenty minutes ago didn’t hurt.
He knew the drug’s effects. His heart rate was up. His pupils were dilating, letting in more light and making his vision better. His hearing was more acute. He had more energy, more stamina, and he could remain awake for a long time. Dexies were old friends of his. But it was more than that.
He turned to his team. They were helmeted, visors up, with black SRT fatigues covering light body armor. Flashbang stun grenades hung from chests. Sawed-off shotguns ready. MP5 submachine guns ready. A heavy two-person battering ram stood upright against one of the seats. They looked out of place in the well-appointed interior of a new executive helicopter.
Their eyes were on him, a couple sharp, but relaxed, a couple wide open and nervous. He barely knew any of these people. Don Morris had acquired them all from somewhere in recent weeks, but knowing Don, they were very good at what they did. They were four men and a woman. He had been formally introduced to them for the first time at the briefing a couple of hours ago. He knew them by the names sewn on their uniforms.
“Okay kids,” he said. “You know the deal. We’re going in short-staffed and partially blind. So we hit hard and fast. We’re going to be vulnerable getting out of this bird, so the shorter amount of time that takes, the more likely you and your partner walk out of here alive. Clear on that?”
They all nodded.
“What?”
“Clear,” they said, almost in unison.
“Fast rope, we go over the falls two at a time. One on each side, sequence reverse order, C-Team, B-Team, then A-Team. Hit the ground, get out of the way, and be ready to lay down covering fire as needed. Move to the house fast and disperse. Spread out. If there are shooters down there, we want to make it hard on them.”
He paused. “Clear?”
“Clear!”
“C-Team?”
The blonde-haired woman and a young dark-haired guy raised their hands. He glanced at the names. Paige was the woman. Deckers was the man.
“I need you guys behind that house, covering rear exits before the ram hits. Be ready to triangulate fire on anyone coming out. Stay out of each other’s way. You have one rule: Do NOT shoot the president.”
C-Team smiled at that, but Luke wasn’t being funny.
“B-Team?”
Two hands went up. Luke glanced at the names. Hokens and Lofthouse. Who were these people? The faces looked at him.
Luke raised one finger.
“One hit with the ram. That’s what I need. Make it the best you’ve ever done. Get on that porch five seconds before…”
Luke looked at his partner. He was a tall guy with a heavy beard and steely eyes. His black uniform was the wife-beater version—no sleeves. His thick, muscled arms had a mad intaglio of tattoos all over them. There were a couple of scars that could have come from bullets. The guy had special ops written all over him. Just looking at him made Luke miss Ed Newsam. Kerry was the name stitched on the man’s jumpsuit.
“Five seconds before me and Kerry. Hit that door, toss your flashbangs, then fall back hard. We are coming through at full speed. As soon as we pass, guns ready and in the door behind us. Careful, though. We may take fire going in.”
He looked at Kerry.
“It’s you and me, buddy. I sense you’ve done this before.”
The guy smiled. He was missing a front tooth. “Oh yeah.”
“We don’t tolerate resistance,” Luke said. “We don’t want a gunfight, but we stop anybody who does. Someone shoots, someone so much as shows a weapon, they’re out of the game. That said, we’re not here to kill the president of the United States. Cool?”
“What if the people in there are Americans?” Kerry said.
“If they’re Americans, they see us
coming and they surrender,” Luke said.
“Three minutes ETA,” the pilot’s voice said over the intercom.
Luke took out his satellite phone and speed-dialed Swann’s number. The signal did its dance from earth to space, and back again.
“I see a flaw in this whole operation,” Kerry said.
“Now’s a good time to bring that up,” Luke said. “We’re going to hit in two minutes.” What was it about this guy that reminded him of Ed again?
The man shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about it. It became clear to me just now.”
Luke glanced out the window. They were flying low and moving fast through the darkness. The hillsides below them were blanketed with dense forests. They were just above the treetops. “Okay. I’m all ears.”
“Suppose you’re the Secret Service, and you evacuated the president here to keep him safe after the attack on the White House? Then a handful of SWAT-looking lunatics come falling out of the sky and crashing through your doors in the early hours before dawn? Are you just gonna surrender? Or are you gonna fight to the death?”
Swann’s voice came over the phone. “Luke?” His voice was on speaker. Everyone in the passenger cabin of the chopper could hear him.
“Yeah, Swann.”
“Okay,” Swann said. “Clock is ticking. They’re gonna know we’re coming any second. I just pulled up real-time imagery.”
“How’s it look?”
“It seems like no one is there,” Swann said. “There are no personnel apparent on the grounds. There are no shooters in the high gables. There are no cars parked near the house. There’s no one on the porch. There are a couple of lights on inside, but they could be on a timer. The place looks completely empty.”
That was odd.
“Okay. No one is home. I hope that turns out to be true. Don’t go anywhere. We might need you.”
