Trade-Off

by Trade-Off (retail) (epub)

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s classified. Everything about the fuckin’ place is classified, and they’re real serious about it. It don’t have a fence, but what it has got are motion sensors and cameras the whole way round it, and a bunch of armed guards driving ’bout the place all the time. These guys is real mean, by all accounts. They call ’em the ‘cammo dudes’ ’cause they wear these camouflage uniforms and stuff, and they’re allowed to shoot you.’

  ‘They’re what?’

  ‘Yup,’ Reilly nodded. ‘Step over the border and these guys is allowed to gun you down. Believe they’ve done it a few times, too.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Hunter said. ‘I see what you mean. I hope we don’t have to try to get in there.’

  Reilly suddenly sat up straighter, looking down at the papers in front of him, and shook his head.

  ‘Gonna have to disappoint you there,’ he said, his voice low and thick, and passed Hunter a single sheet of paper.

  ‘Should have looked at these earlier, I guess,’ he said.

  The paper Hunter was holding was the transport notice from Montana to McCarran Air Base for one Christy-Lee Kaufmann, signed by Doctor R. Evans and time-stamped at thirteen forty-two that day.

  * * *

  The APB for the Lincoln had hit the streets three minutes after the patrolman had closed the door of Willie Betts’s security booth, together with an instruction to observe, but on no account to approach, the vehicle.

  A black-and-white parked outside a gas station on the east side of I-15, just south of The Excalibur, had seen the Lincoln drive past, heading south, but couldn’t follow because of the traffic. The driver called in the sighting report and left it at that.

  Two minutes later, another black-and-white north-bound on I-15 had seen a black Lincoln town car pull into a diner parking lot, but the driver hadn’t been able to confirm the registration number.

  Harris was cruising south past Caesar’s Palace when the Las Vegas PD dispatcher called him. He put the two reports together and accelerated down the highway. Templeton and Grant were still near the middle of Vegas, around twenty minutes behind him.

  Hunter sat silently for a long moment, his eyes staring blankly at the sheet of paper Reilly had given him, then he shook his head. He looked again at the paper, and at the time Christy-Lee had arrived at McCarran.

  ‘She’d been in the ambulance we stopped, hadn’t she?’ he asked, his voice quiet and controlled. ‘We watched them deliver her through the main gate at McCarran, and then stopped them on the way out. Christ, the driver even told us they’d just done an interstate pickup, and it never occurred to me it could be her.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Reilly said. ‘Sure wish we’d stopped that ambulance on the way in.’

  ‘That’s it, then,’ Hunter said. ‘Christy-Lee’s probably already on her way out to Groom Lake, so whatever it takes, we have to get inside, and we have to get inside tonight.’

  ‘OK,’ Reilly nodded, reached down and started the engine. He pulled the shift lever into reverse and turned the car to face the entrance. Headlamps blazed briefly across the parking lot as another vehicle entered and then stopped, completely blocking access to the road.

  ‘Dick,’ Hunter said urgently, but Reilly was way ahead of him, already halfway out of the Lincoln with his pistol in his hand.

  Chapter Twenty

  Saturday

  McCarran Air Force Base, Las Vegas, Nevada

  The airport was busy, and the Hercules had to wait in the dispersal for almost thirty minutes before the pilot received permission to taxi. At the end of the runway, the pilot pushed the four throttles forward and the C130 swiftly gathered speed down the concrete, then lifted slowly into the air before making a climbing turn to the west towards the setting sun, turning northwest for Groom Lake.

  In the rear compartment, the lid of one of the caskets was vibrating rhythmically as the occupant did his best to force it off, despite the restraining straps. A moment’s rational thought would have been enough to convince Doctor Evans that the fabric was effectively unbreakable, but he had long since passed the point at which he was thinking rationally. He was driven by sheer, stark and unreasoning terror, because he knew, absolutely and without the slightest doubt, what was in store for him at Groom Lake. He knew, because he’d seen it, and he knew that for him the nightmare was about to become a reality.

  Once during the flight one of the Roland Oliver technicians came over to his casket and peered inside through the faceplate. Evans briefly stopped his attempts to force off the lid and began shouting, but the caskets were soundproofed. The technician grinned down at the doctor and waved a hand at him before returning to his seat and his book.

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  The first shot drilled straight through the laminated windshield of the Lincoln directly above the steering wheel, puncturing the air where Reilly had been sitting less than a second before, and shattering the glass of the rear window. The second bullet applied the same treatment to the passenger side of the car half a second later, but Hunter was long gone.

  Harris and Morgan were both out of the Chevrolet, which Harris had stopped, with doors wide open and lights blazing, right in the entrance to the diner parking lot. Special Forces’ training is thorough, and even before Harris had seen Reilly and Hunter bail out of the Lincoln, he and Morgan had already abandoned their vehicle.

  Only an amateur gets himself stuck in a car in a fire-fight. Cars may look strong, but the metal is invariably thin and offers almost exactly the same protection against small arms’ fire as a sheet of cardboard. So, Harris dived left, and Morgan went right.

  The diner hadn’t been operated in quite a while, and the vegetation around the edge of the parking lot had sprouted out of control. When Hunter’s crouching, weaving run on the blind side of the parked Lincoln brought him to the edge of the tarmac, he vaulted over a low bush without a pause, and landed virtually on top of Reilly.

  The sheriff put a finger to his lips, then pointed at his own chest, and then off to the left. Hunter nodded, and as Reilly crept away, he began moving silently through the scrubland in the opposite direction.

  Morgan lay flat on the ground about fifteen feet clear of the Chevrolet, his right arm outstretched and his Smith and Wesson automatic pistol pointing in the general direction of the abandoned Lincoln. He’d seen the two perps run from the car, but they’d both dived behind it and he’d been unable to get a shot at either of them. Then he’d glimpsed them vanishing into the undergrowth at the back of the parking lot, and he’d seen no movement at all since then.

  He glanced to his left, saw Harris crouched down behind a low wall, and whistled softly. Harris looked across, nodded and pointed, and then the two men moved as one but in different directions, crouching low and burrowing silently through the undergrowth around the perimeter of the lot towards where Hunter and Reilly had to be hiding.

  Hunter had watched, amazed, as Reilly moved away from him. Despite his considerable size, he moved like a snake, swift and silent, and Hunter thanked his stars, and not for the first time, for putting the two of them on the same side.

  When Reilly had vanished into the gloom, Hunter sat for a few moments on his haunches, looking cautiously across the parking lot, but preserving his night sight in the gathering dusk by taking care not to look anywhere near the lights of the Chevrolet. He saw nothing, no sign of movement, but knew that the two men would even then be working their way towards him.

  Hunter smiled grimly, pulled the magazine out of his Glock and checked that it was fully loaded – he knew that it was, but checking twice never hurts – and then melted backwards into the darkness, away from the edge of the lot and deeper into the undergrowth. Their two attackers, he judged, would probably follow the perimeter, so that was the one place he wasn’t going to stay.

  A little over fifty feet away, Reilly sat crouched behind a bush. Like Hunter, he’d moved deeper into the undergrowth and then stopped moving, and was content to wait for the
hunters to come to him, rather than trying to find them. He was listening intently. The sound of traffic passing on the road beyond the deserted diner provided a constant background noise, and Reilly was trying to tune that out and listen for the cracking of twigs or the rustle as a body moved past a bush.

  Reilly saw Morgan before he heard him. A deeper shadow moved slightly, out of synch with the shadows around it. Reilly did nothing, just aimed his Colt Commander in the direction of the shape, stopped breathing and waited. When the shadow moved again, he whistled softly.

  Morgan turned quickly, his right arm raised, but he didn’t shoot because there was nothing to see, nothing to shoot at.

  ‘Harris?’ he said, his voice soft and questioning.

  Reilly had, since his time in Vietnam, a horror of friendly fire, and that single word told him all he needed to know.

  ‘Nope,’ he said, and squeezed the trigger of the Colt.

  Morgan reacted instantly as Reilly spoke, throwing himself backwards and on to his feet, and pulled the trigger of his Smith and Wesson as he did so. Reilly’s shot caught his left shoulder and spun him around, but Morgan’s second bullet returned the favour, ploughing a furrow across the sheriff’s chest and tearing through his pectoral muscles.

  Reilly grunted in pain, but fired twice more. His first shot missed, but the second found its mark, taking Morgan square in the chest, and he toppled like a falling tree.

  On the far side of the lot, Harris stopped moving at the sound of the first shot, and flattened himself on the ground. As the last echoes of the gunfire died away, silence fell. One man lay dying, and three men lay waiting.

  Hunter moved first, quietly easing his head around a bush and staring out across the parking lot. He’d counted five or perhaps six shots, but he couldn’t tell whether or not they’d all been fired from the same pistol – different calibres do make different sounds, but the shots had been so close together that identifying them was virtually impossible.

  On the opposite side of the parking area, Reilly was watching the lot as well, as he cautiously explored the damage to his chest with his left hand. As far as he could tell, the bullet had only grazed him, ripping open the skin of his chest and tearing the pectoral muscles apart. His chest ached and throbbed, but it was a numb, detached kind of pain that he knew would pass soon enough, to be replaced by the searing, stabbing agony that he had experienced once before, in Vietnam. He wasn’t looking forward to the next twenty-four hours.

  The more immediate problem was the second killer. Morgan was out of it, either dead or dying, and could be discounted, but somewhere, probably within fifty or sixty feet of where Reilly sat, the second killer lurked, pistol in hand, waiting to finish the job.

  Then Reilly grinned through the pain as an idea suddenly occurred to him. The man he’d shot had called out the name ‘Harris,’ a name which Reilly remembered from Beaver Creek. Harris was obviously the second killer, who would even then be wondering exactly who had shot whom on the other side of the parking lot. Reilly grunted, kicked the bush next to him a couple of times, and then let out a loud and somewhat theatrical groan, to be rewarded only by silence.

  ‘Harris,’ Reilly said, after a second or two, his voice hoarse and distorted. ‘I got them both, but I’m hurt bad. You’ve got to help me.’

  Harris swivelled his head, listening intently. It didn’t sound like Morgan, but his voice would change if he’d taken a shot in the chest or stomach. He paused in indecision, then slowly rose to his feet, his eyes scanning the parking lot from side to side, and listening intently.

  ‘Morgan?’ Harris called, and moved towards the edge of the undergrowth.

  He’d taken two steps across the tarmac when Hunter brought the butt of the Glock crashing down on the back of his head.

  Groom Lake Air Force Base, Nevada

  Roger Ketch paced his office, waiting. Harris had called over an hour earlier with the news that Reilly and Hunter had been spotted in Las Vegas and given details of the car they’d been seen driving, but since then he’d heard nothing from anybody.

  When his internal telephone rang he grabbed it immediately, although he knew it couldn’t possibly be anything to do with the search for the two perps.

  ‘Ketch.’

  ‘Control Tower, sir,’ the voice said. ‘Your Hercules is fifteen minutes from the runway.’

  Ketch spun around and looked at the schedule pinned to the wall behind him, his eyes tracing the horizontal columns. He’d almost forgotten, but the last scheduled delivery of the week was due almost immediately.

  ‘Thanks,’ he replied. ‘Let me know when it touches down.’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  When he’d replaced the receiver Ketch made a call to the staff room in the building, alerting the handlers that the arrival of the Hercules was imminent. Then he pressed a button on a light grey console on the left hand side of his desk and passed on the same message. The answer was little more than a high-pitched squawk, but Ketch had become used to interpreting the sounds from the tiny speaker, and knew that his message had been understood.

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Hunter had always been good at prioritizing. As soon as Harris had hit the ground like a sack of cement, Hunter kicked his pistol well out of reach and then frisked him, removing Harris’s wallet as well as a large pocket knife and two spare magazines for the Smith and Wesson. Then he’d lashed Harris’s hands together behind his back with a couple of large plastic cable ties.

  Only then had Hunter called out to Reilly and made his way cautiously across the parking lot when the sheriff answered.

  ‘Dick?’

  ‘Here,’ Reilly replied, his voice racked with pain.

  Hunter crouched beside the sheriff, pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and switched it on. What he saw made him catch his breath. The whole front of Reilly’s shirt was soaked with blood.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Dick,’ Hunter said. ‘We’ve got to get you to a hospital.’

  To Hunter’s surprise, Reilly shook his head and smiled. ‘Looks a whole lot worse than it is,’ he said. ‘Bullet just creased my chest. All I need is some strapping and a bandage, and maybe a coupla pain-killers.’

  ‘And maybe a new shirt, too,’ Hunter added, relief in his voice.

  ‘Yeah, that’d be good.’

  Hunter braced himself and hoisted Reilly to his feet, which caused the sheriff to call out in pain as his chest muscles pulled apart.

  ‘You OK?’ Hunter asked.

  ‘Yup. Not gonna be doin’ any aerobics for a while, that’s for sure.’

  Once Reilly was on his feet, the pain from his chest eased considerably. Hunter unbuttoned Reilly’s shirt, pulled it off and dropped it on the ground, then looked closely at the wound.

  ‘You’re right, Dick. It is just a scratch. A deep scratch, but just a scratch,’ he said, and walked across to the Lincoln. There was no medical kit, so he selected a towel from his overnight bag and tore it into three strips. One strip he doubled up as a pad for the wound, and the other two he tied together as a rudimentary bandage, which he wrapped around Reilly’s chest and knotted at the back.

  ‘Not exactly Mayo Clinic stuff,’ he said, ‘but that should stop or at least slow down the bleeding. You OK to get into the car?’

  ‘No problem. Guess we’ll be taking the Chevy?’

  ‘You got it,’ Hunter said.

  Reilly walked slowly over to Harris’s Chevrolet and carefully eased himself down into the passenger seat.

  Hunter checked Morgan – he was dead – and frisked him as he had done with Harris. Then he pulled and rolled the body deeper into the scrubby undergrowth, well out of sight of the road.

  The Lincoln wasn’t going anywhere, with the smashed windshield and rear window, so Hunter transferred his and Reilly’s bags onto the back seat of the Chevrolet, along with the contents of Morgan’s and Harris’s pockets and their pistols and ammunition, then walked across to where Harris was lying.

  He was still u
nconscious, so Hunter hoisted him onto his shoulders using a fireman’s lift, walked over to the Chevrolet and dropped him into the trunk. Then Hunter climbed into the driver’s seat, started the engine, turned the car around and pulled out into the highway traffic, heading south and away from Vegas.

  Groom Lake Air Force Base, Nevada

  The Hercules landed nearly forty minutes late, but that didn’t matter. As usual, it taxied off the runway opposite Hangar 18, then followed the southwest taxiway to the Rolver Systems’ compound, and parked near the back of the building, adjacent to the steel gates in the boundary fence. The USAF van was already waiting when the pilot shut down the engines, and five minutes later the crew was in the van and en route to the Flight Operations Centre.

  Once the crew had left, the two Rolver Systems’ employees who’d flown in the cargo compartment of the Hercules opened the rear cargo door to allow unloading to start. The steel gates were swung wide and two small forklifts were driven out of the compound and up the C-130’s loading ramp. In the Hercules, the caskets were detached from the central monitoring system, and transfer of them to the Rolver Systems’ building began. Nobody took the slightest notice of the casket containing Evans, who was still trying to punch and kick his way out.

  Three quarters of an hour later, once the last casket had been removed from the aircraft and a consignment of empty caskets loaded aboard, the compound gates and the doors to the building were locked. Seventy minutes after that, the flight crew returned to the Hercules, and within twenty minutes the aircraft was on its way back to McCarran Air Base. The next planned delivery was Monday afternoon.