The Wrong Man (Complete 3-Book International Thriller Box Set)

by Fritz Galt

Inside, blinding fluorescent lights glared down on filing cabinets and on a hot young woman who sat poised behind a desk. Veering to one side, Ferrar was rewarded with a remarkable view of her legs. She wore long brown leather boots, a miniskirt and a blouse with a lapel that threatened to blow completely apart in the sudden gust of wind.

  “Close that door and come in here,” she said.

  He obliged.

  She had a sweet face, with bright brown eyes that opened wide when she saw the blood.

  A pair of patrolmen from the St. Louis Police Department positioned themselves on either side of the entrance to the Air Cargo office. Meanwhile, Sergeant Fontaine, his muscles rippling under his starched uniform and leather jacket, aimed for just above the knob and took a flying kick at it.

  The door gave way with little resistance, and he burst into the Air Cargo office, stopping just short of the receptionist’s desk.

  There, Fontaine righted himself, his service revolver drawn. He had nothing to aim at but a pretty young woman with a funny look on her face.

  He straightened his jacket and quickly holstered his gun. The receptionist smiled with relief and went back to her business, which seemed primarily to be patting down her disheveled hair and pinning it up.

  “S’cuse me, ma’am,” Fontaine started. “But have you see’d a man ’bout forty years old, six feet tall, black hair…”

  “Muscles out to here?”

  “Er, yes. That would be him.”

  “Well,” the woman replied. “We might have had a brief encounter.”

  “Like, what did he want?” Fontaine asked, trying to summon all his interrogative powers. He was feeling lucky today. This case might well put him in line for a move into Investigations.

  “Well, he wanted to know something about a cargo flight,” she said.

  “Does this have anything to do with a container shipment that went out in the past hour?”

  “Yes, it does. They just barely got it on the flight and took off.”

  Fontaine moved in and flipped out his notepad. “And what flight might that be, ma’am?” He had been on an airplane once.

  “It was chartered,” she said.

  “Oh.” He didn’t know anything about chartered.

  “Let me check,” she continued, turning and searching her records. “That’s strange. No flight plan. I have no idea where it’s headed.”

  Fontaine tried to read the pages over her shoulder. But his eyes couldn’t help traveling down her neckline to the firm points in her bra. “Where do they usually fu— er, fly?”

  “It’s a tourist charter. They fly to all the normal destinations,” she breathed dreamily. “Hawaii, Las Vegas, Niagara Falls, Grand Canyon, San Francisco. You name it.”

  Fontaine glanced at his two colleagues, stumped for what to ask next. Maybe he wasn’t quite investigative material after all. “So, uh, where is the suspect heading?”

  “Oh, I have no idea. What is he suspected of?”

  “I can’t tell you that, ma’am,” he said, leaning forward confidentially. Maybe he couldn’t make it in the detective department, but he could make it in the women department.

  “Do you know his whereabouts at the present time?” he asked, savoring the sound of his own words. He straightened out his full torso and circled her. Boldly, he looked under the desk to see if Ferrar was hiding under her skirt.

  He raised his eyes quickly. It wasn’t much of a skirt.

  “He’s in a plane flying somewhere, I’m sure.”

  Fontaine furrowed his brow, humiliated. “He’s got a plane?”

  “This is an airport after all,” she breathed.

  There it was again. Her breathy voice. He drew back and nodded. She wanted him.

  He reached for his belt and slowly unhooked the radio. Barely able to contain the tremble in his voice, he told the police commissioner the whole story.

  To Fontaine’s disappointment, Commissioner Frank Wheeler didn’t sound so overjoyed by the news.

  “Okay, so the bombs are on one airplane and the suspect’s on another,” Commissioner Wheeler summed up. “I want all planes at the airport grounded, Sergeant. Commercial, military, private. We’ve got all sorts of injuries to children at the Arch, a pileup of police cars on I-70, an FBI agent dead from falling into the Mississippi in a ball of fire, another FBI agent with a gunshot wound to her shoulder and the FBI’s SAC down with a shoulder separation and severe facial lacerations. I tell you, we’ve got to nail this guy.”

  Just then, Fontaine heard a private jet soar overhead in a takeoff profile.

  It was heading west.

  Chapter 22

  Rebecca Friedman stopped trimming pork chops and leaned over the kitchen counter to listen to a public service announcement on the radio.

  It was Attorney General Douglas Laidlaw, his voice yappy as a Southern preacher, speaking in apocalyptic terms.

  He told the nation that he had just learned from the FBI that the air transportation system was at immediate risk of another terrorist attack. He said that he had directed the Federal Aviation Administration to ground all air transport nationwide effective immediately. Furthermore, he advised that the public sit tight for a few hours until Federal authorities stabilized the situation.

  The vagaries went on. There were “likely targets,” and “potential suspects under surveillance.”

  “Damn it,” she shouted at the radio. She pounded a fist against the counter. “You know who you’re after. Give us all the details.”

  But he didn’t. Instead, he went on to announce a general alert concerning tourist sites in the United States.

  “Vague. Vague,” she cried out. “Where? Florida? New York? Washington? California?”

  He gave no more details, and the regular programming resumed.

  At that moment, the front door popped open.

  She looked around startled and grabbed the meat cleaver.

  “Easy, dear.” It was just her husband.

  She approached him with an accusatory glare. She stopped well short of the perfunctory welcome kiss that she normally administered, and snapped at him, “Why doesn’t that bastard give out Ferrar’s name and physical description? Why, I could go to the Washington Post right now and spell out all the details that we need to nab him.”

  “You’d better not, dear,” he said, hanging up his overcoat in the hallway closet. “What’s cooking?”

  “How could you even have an appetite at a time like this?”

  “Because I know the FBI is on the case.”

  His ambivalence was an open invitation to attack.

  “Lester, our son lies buried in rubble in Afghanistan because of that man. Ferrar has ruined all our lives, and now he’s fixing to do something truly evil to the nation. I can feel it in my bones. What are we waiting for?”

  He looked downward at her, his eyes small and hard. “Rebecca, we don’t know for sure what he’s up to. There are even some camps that say he’s going after the real terrorists. So don’t go jumping to conclusions.”

  “Some camps? Like who? Like you?”

  “No, not me at all. I’ve been after Ferrar from Day One. It’s people like Congressman Connors who’re convinced that Ferrar deserves a Medal of Honor.”

  “How can this kind of crap go on at the highest levels of government?” she said. “You call up the attorney general right now and give him a piece of your mind.”

  “You mean a piece of your mind.”

  She glowered at him, then suddenly realized that the cleaver was still clenched in her fist and she was leveling it at him.

  She dropped it on the counter with a clatter and held her apron over her face. Her shoulders began to tremble involuntarily. And tears of helplessness quickly drenched the apron.

  Lester put an arm around her, but she couldn’t be consoled.

  “Okay, I’ll do it,” he relented.

  He sat down with her on the couch, placed himself beside her and pulled a phone from his pocket.

&nb
sp; “Hello? Get me Hank. We’ve got to release a full description of Ferrar to the press.”

  Flying a Gulfstream IV was normally a joy for Ferrar. The controls were simple and the small jet responded with enthusiasm.

  However, flying while drowsy with a throbbing headache made it difficult. And flying during a nationwide grounding of all aircraft threatened to turn him into flaming wreckage.

  As soon as the radio crackled with a general FAA directive for all aircraft to land at the nearest safe harbor, he developed a distinct discomfort at being airborne. And it didn’t make him feel any better to know that he was the intended target.

  Soon military aircraft would claim all the nation’s airspace, and he’d be a sitting duck. Or, rather, a flying duck. No matter.

  It was time to think clearly about where to land.

  Nancy, the sweet young woman at the Lambert Field Air Cargo office had been most helpful. It hadn’t taken much persuasion to get the DC-7’s destination out of her. It was Oakland California International Airport.

  She had been worried about his bleeding scalp and had tended to him with hydrogen peroxide and some tender pressure.

  Hoping to get a head start on those who were pursuing him, he had extracted a promise from her not to divulge the destination of the DC-7 to any authorities. Again, she had complied.

  Then she had applied even more pressure, this time with her entire body, and soon he had found himself sandwiched between her and the water cooler. It had taken self-control to extricate himself from the situation, and it had taken even more diplomacy to remain in her good graces as he left.

  He looked back on the incident with detachment. How long had it been since he had had such a woman? Any woman?

  The war in Afghanistan had taken a toll in many unforeseeable ways. One of them was a total lack of women on the battlefield—or in the country for that matter, except for the black gliding tents that had passed for women. Where had the ladies of the American military been when it was time to free their Afghan sisters?

  He could think of one fine woman in uniform.

  He pushed a button that set the jet on autopilot, heading due west over the spiked peaks of Colorado. He loosened his safety belt and slipped his cell phone out of his pocket.

  He hoped it didn’t throw off his navigational equipment.

  Bonnie Taylor entered her cozy house in the Twin Peaks neighborhood of San Francisco, having finished a frenzied afternoon of fleet maneuvers and contingency planning. She hung her white Coast Guard hat in her closet and kicked off her boots. Then she plopped into the sofa in front of her television and clicked on the remote.

  A fuzzy close-up of a man appeared on the screen. It took a moment for her to realize that she knew him. It was George Ferrar, rugged, dark and looking like a scared rabbit.

  “This CIA file photo of George Ferrar was just released minutes ago to the press. He is considered armed and very dangerous.”

  Her phone rang.

  She ran into the kitchen and grabbed the receiver off the wall.

  “Yes?” she answered, trying to mask her brusqueness.

  “This is Ferrar. We’re in big trouble.”

  “We’re in trouble? Your wanted poster is on TV, or haven’t you heard? The Bay Area is panicking with reports of an impending terrorist strike. And guess what? You’re the terrorist. What are you gonna hit? You’ve got all these fine targets here, buildings, bridges, museums, Silicon Valley, tectonic faults. People are scared out of their wits.”

  “Hear me out.”

  She listened for several minutes, at first unsure if she wanted to continue the conversation. Ferrar contended that Bolton had murdered his own men in Tora Bora, seized an atomic bomb in Pakistan and was going to blow some place up.

  It made no sense. Sure, Tray was capable of anything, but so was any other commando with a twisted mind. Take Ferrar for instance.

  Then Ferrar came to the last part. “And it’s all because of you.”

  She caught her breath. The story suddenly began to make sense. It could easily be because of her.

  “Are you still listening?” he asked softly.

  Reluctantly, she said, “Okay, you’ve got my attention.”

  She heard him take a deep breath. “I believe Bolton will show up on your radar screen within the next few hours.”

  “Then I’m going to leave here at once.”

  “Bonnie,” he said with some clear difficulty. “You can’t.”

  “What? I can’t leave my own house in the face of who, no what’s, coming here?”

  “I need you to draw him in. Bait him. Otherwise I can’t get him.”

  She gave a half-laugh, “You two men are just out to destroy me. You’re a team. You’ve always been that way. He’s destroyed my self-respect…”

  “He’s been abusive, hasn’t he? He’s a master of mental torture.”

  “…and you’re playing with my emotions, too. You’ve both abused me.”

  This caused Ferrar a moment’s hesitation. When he came back, there was a surge of emotion in his voice.

  “Bonnie, listen to me carefully. Bolton and I are not a team. Never have been, never will be. This is our only chance to find the bomb. Just occupy him for as long as you can. Distract him. Hell, give him what he wants.”

  “George, you’re still living in a fantasy world. And now you want me to sacrifice myself for you…”

  “We have to work together.”

  “…and then you’ll come and slay the dragon. Ta da!”

  “Okay, just call me St. George. The problem is I can’t come right away. I’m in the air right now.”

  “Do you think I’m nuts? Wait around for a homicidal maniac to break into my house? George, I haven’t heard from you for years. For all I know, these stories on TV are true.”

  “I’m no terrorist. I want to help you.”

  On the fringes of her perception, she heard footsteps at her front door. She whirled around and her heart skipped a beat.

  “Oh, my God,” she breathed.

  Tray Bolton burst through the door. He wore a broad smile and held out both arms toward her.

  “Tray,” she said, losing all sensation in her body. The handset fell from her grasp and swung by her knees.

  Chapter 23

  At Peterson Air Force Base east of Colorado Springs, Commander Whitey Sullivan took an important, but expected, phone call in his office. It was the head of the North American Aerospace Defense command, otherwise known as NORAD. The NORAD chief had a note of urgency in his voice.

  Whitey stood at attention while he listened.

  Apparently, the FBI had located a suspect. He was airborne and flying west out of Lambert in St. Louis.

  Whitey smiled at the irony. While NORAD was busy searching for incoming missiles from Russia, Peterson Air Force Base had recently been equipped to take on the more immediate threat of attack from a domestic platform.

  As part of Operation Noble Eagle, helping to defend the continental United States in the aftermath of 11 September, his base had just received an AWACS aircraft that was previously on loan to NATO. At the moment, he had her flying high above the Rocky Mountains, her sophisticated radar combined with an identification friend-or-foe subsystem picking up, identifying and tracking all flying objects from low-flying planes to commercial airliners, even incoming missiles and UFOs.

  The FAA had grounded all aircraft in the nation, so if there was a blip on the AWACS console, that would be their man. It couldn’t be any easier than that.

  Whitey hung up the secure telephone and got on the base intercom. “Scramble the F-15 and F-16 fleet at once. I want air reconnaissance support for the AWACS out over Utah. We have a suspect flying west from St. Louis. I want you fully armed for air-to-air combat.”

  Six crews were ready on strip alert, and two minutes later he heard jet engines firing up on the tarmac. He silently counted the number of planes. “One, two, three, four, five, six.”

  He smiled to himsel
f and leaned over the base’s intercom mike. “Good luck, men. We’re gonna shoot ourselves some terrorists tonight.”

  He parted the blinds in his office window and watched as the blazing arrow-shaped jets roared down the tarmac and off into the dark, empty sky.

  It didn’t take long for the E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft, known as AWACS, circling over Salt Lake City to spot trouble. The modified Boeing 707/320 commercial airframe’s thirty-foot rotating radar dome quickly zeroed in on the only other manmade bird in the sky.

  Reconnaissance Officer Burt Huett had watched with satisfaction as the blips on his graphic console followed predictable patterns of flight. No new blips appeared and all planes in the air converged on the numerous commercial airports in the West and on the West Coast.

  There were, of course the dozens of private airplanes that disappeared into a vast number of small landing strips. Those pilots ranged from ranchers, crop dusters, flight instructors and private businessmen to the occasional weirdo in California or Colorado trying out a new type of microlight in the middle of the night.

  Only one dot remained on the large console. It maintained an unswerving westward course. The blip was unaccompanied by a call number, so it either didn’t have an identification transponder or the system had been silenced. Another suspicious feature of the plane was its ground speed, calculated to be a good 450 miles per hour, well above the speeds attainable by prop planes.

  Burt reached for his radio and transmitted a message over the general flight frequency. “This is the United States Air Force. We’re trying to contact an aircraft flying over northeastern California. Come in.”

  No response.

  “The FAA has grounded all flights immediately. Please identify yourself. Over.”

  Ominously, there was no response. While the radio blared mere static, the blip continued to move westward undeterred. It was possible that the aircraft had a radio failure and didn’t receive the original FAA message to land. In that case, it wouldn’t have heard Burt’s second warning. More likely, the pilot was ignoring him.