Armageddon Conspiracy

by John Thompson

  Maggie shook her head in disbelief as she skimmed the pages. “This cost someone thousands of dollars.”

  Brent glanced at the truck registration showing the Lambertville address. “Reverend Turner’s liable to disappear when he learns these two guys are missing,” he said. “I’m going back.”

  Maggie looked at him, her eyes glazed with exhaustion. After a second, she found enough energy to nod.

  He reached across the seat and took her hand. “Alone,” he said. He didn’t know how he could succeed by himself, but it didn’t matter. “I can’t thank you enough for . . . everything.”

  Maggie seemed to come awake. She slapped the steering wheel with her other hand, as a bit of her old spirit glimmered. “Not a chance. You’ve got the world’s worst sense of direction. You’d never even find his house without me.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  LAMBERTVILLE, NJ, JUNE 31

  BRENT BRAKED TO A STOP on the gravel road then used Maggie’s flashlight to check the number on the mailbox—75 East Elm, though the five lacked a nail and tilted at an angle against the seven. The house was small, like the others in this area that was not quite suburb and not quite country. It stood back maybe fifty yards from the road, well separated from the neighbors on both sides.

  Brent checked his watch, twelve thirty. Lights still burned downstairs, although the front porch light was turned off. A van and an older model Volvo sedan sat in the unpaved driveway.

  “Looks like somebody’s still awake,” he muttered. Was it the Reverend awaiting a phone call from the two deputies? He glanced toward Maggie and saw she had finally dozed off. He watched her chest rise and fall with deep respirations and wished he could leave her there undisturbed.

  “Hey,” he said after a few seconds, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “We’re here.”

  She sat up and blinked. “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’ll make it,” she muttered.

  “You wouldn’t have any wire cutters?”

  She looked at him and wiped at her eyes. “Phone line?”

  Brent nodded.

  “I’m glad one of us can still think.” She jerked her head. “In the trunk.”

  He found the wire cutters in a wooden box along with a crowbar, several screwdrivers, and a slip bar for unlocking cars. He closed the trunk softly then tapped on Maggie’s side window. “Got it,” he whispered.

  She climbed behind the wheel and waited there while he circled the house and prayed the Reverend wasn’t a dog lover. He reached the backyard without incident and heard the hum of an air conditioning unit in an upstairs window. The overhead wires came from the rear of the property and attached to the house beside the kitchen porch. Enough light spilled through the kitchen curtains to outline a wooden railing about five feet below.

  He crept toward the porch and glanced up, guessing the thinner, lower wire had to be the phone line. The faint sound of a television came through the wall, and he hoped it would mask his footsteps as he climbed the steps and mounted the railing. The wood protested but held, and he pulled out the cutters. A thick coating of rubber covered the handles, but he tensed as the blades gripped the wire, wondering if a few hundred volts were about to blast his body.

  He squeezed, and the wire snapped away from the house with a loud click. He let out a slow breath, stepped gently off the railing, and retraced his steps. He checked the houses on both sides, but they were still dark. In some distant yard a dog barked.

  Maggie met him on the Turner’s front porch. “Any problems?” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “Ready?” He waited for her nod then knocked on the door.

  A few seconds later, they heard heavy footsteps. “Yes?” a familiar voice asked.

  Brent nodded to Maggie. “Reverend Turner?” she said. “This is Special Officer Margaret DeVito with Project Seahawk. I wonder if I could have a word with you on a matter of national importance?”

  “Uh,” the Reverend’s voice came back, suddenly ragged with anxiety. “Well, I don’t know. It’s very late. Could you come back in the morning?”

  “I’m afraid not. It concerns the death of two local sheriff’s deputies and several murders in New York City. I am sure you can appreciate the need for your immediate cooperation.”

  “Uh . . . just a minute.” Brent heard the hiss of hurried whispers and words that sounded like, “Call Mr. Wofford.” A second later a woman’s voice came back, “It doesn’t work.” More whispers followed, something about a cell phone and the van, the rest indistinct.

  “Reverend, I have to ask you to open up right away. This will only take a few minutes.” As Maggie spoke Brent jumped off the porch and raced toward the rear of the house, drawing the pistol from his waistband. As he came around the side, he saw light spilling through the open backdoor and a woman on the porch, wearing a bathrobe. Something about her seemed oddly familiar.

  “Mrs. Turner!” he shouted.

  She swung her head toward him so that the light caught her face. His breath caught as he recognized Ruth Simmons. Panic etched her features as she turned, ran into the house, and slammed the door. A second later, Reverend Turner called out through the closed kitchen door. “You can’t just come barging in our house like this! It’s the middle of the night! We have rights!”

  Brent stepped onto the back porch and rattled the doorknob. He heard a sound like someone choking, and then footsteps. Thirty seconds went by. He fought the urge to check on Maggie. “Open up!” he called, and then used the pistol barrel to break a glass pane in the door.

  As he reached through and flicked the lock, a shotgun blast came from another part of the house. Thinking only of Maggie, he threw open the door and raced inside. He ran through the kitchen, small dining room, and living room, but the downstairs was empty. “Maggie!” he shouted.

  “Out here!”

  He ripped open the front door and saw her, gun drawn, down in a shooter’s crouch. “You okay?” he shouted.

  Before she could answer, there was another shot followed by a hollow thump. Brent jumped back and aimed up the stairs.

  “Reverend Turner, Mrs. Turner,” Maggie shouted. “Throw down your weapons and come to the top of the stairs with your hands up.”

  Brent held his breath. Seconds passed. The same dog still barked. Had the neighbors heard the shots?

  “Reverend Turner!” Maggie called again. “Come down stairs with your hands in the air.”

  Silence.

  “Reverend Turner,” Maggie called. “I’m going to count to ten.”

  She began to count. When she finished, Brent put his foot on the first step. “I’m coming up,” he shouted.

  He crept up the narrow staircase, his gun gripped in both hands, finger brushing the trigger. He paused, listened, and then shoved his fear into the background.

  Harry’s voice was right there with him, as though the two of them were climbing the stairs together. Life’s best when you’re on the edge, bro!

  Brent shook his head. Harry had his head up his ass.

  At the top of the stairs, his pulse slammed his eardrums. Otherwise, there was a deathly stillness. A strong metallic odor came from an open door on the right.

  He risked a peek around the corner, half-expecting a shotgun blast in the face. Instead he saw the bodies and the blood. “Oh my God,” he choked, as he sagged against the wall.

  “What?” Maggie called.

  He shook his head, unable to describe the sight—Reverend Turner in the middle of the floor, most of his jaw missing, a double-barreled shotgun inches from his outstretched hand, Ruth Simmons, or more likely Turner’s wife, sprawled across the bed. Blood and brains splattered the far wall.

  “Oh Jesus,” Maggie said as she came up and looked inside. Brent watched her double over and take several breaths, then quickly open the other two doors on the landing and sweep the empty rooms with her gun.

  He crushed the heels of his hands against his temples. “Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?”r />
  Maggie ignored him and went back in the bedroom. She was all business as she pulled a pair of rubber gloves from her pocket, slipped them on, and pointed at the woman. “There’s something here,” she said.

  Brent didn’t move. After a second Maggie looked back at him.

  He pointed. “That was Ruth Simmons.”

  “The Justice Department lawyer?”

  He nodded.

  “Well hurry up. We don’t have much time.”

  Brent held his breath and rolled the nearly headless body so Maggie could pull out what she’d seen.

  “Family Bible,” she said. “Opened to the Twenty-Third Psalm. She must have been reading it when he shot her.”

  “’The Lord is my shepherd.’ It’s like they were prepared for this,” Brent said. He shook his head in disbelief.

  Maggie began opening drawers and searching the dresser. She found a thin pair of men’s socks and tossed them to him. “Put them on so you don’t leave prints,” she said. “Check the other rooms.”

  Brent glanced in the bathroom then searched a guest bedroom. A cluttered desk stood by the window, and he flipped through piles of magazine articles, partly finished sermons, and stacks of correspondence. He took the letters with return addresses outside Lambertville and a black address book he found on top of the stack of sermons.

  “Time to go,” Maggie said from the door. Brent checked his watch, twelve forty-five. It hadn’t even been five minutes since the first shot, but if neighbors had heard it, the police could arrive any moment.

  He hurriedly jerked open the desk drawers and rummaged through the cheap two-drawer metal filing cabinet that sat beside the desk but found only manila folders with tax records and files of past sermons. He followed Maggie down the stairs and out the front door, where the cool night air shocked his lungs and the odors of grass and damp earth were like perfume. The neighboring houses remained completely dark.

  As they reached the car, he paused for a second to listen. The dog still barked, and somewhere far away a train sounded a single, lonely note.

  FORTY-SIX

  MORRISTOWN, NJ, JULY 1

  THEY’D DRIVEN THROUGH SPARSE LATE-NIGHT traffic all the way to Morristown before Maggie broke the silence. “I have something to tell you,” she said. “It’s been on my mind for a while, but it seemed too crazy like . . . a tangent or crazy extrapolation.”

  “Let me guess—you want to have sex with me?”

  She looked at him in utter amazement. Four people were dead tonight, and he was making jokes. “You really are a sick human being.”

  Brent shook his head. “Uncle Fred always said that humor is the only defense against the unspeakable.”

  “Imagine, a four syllable word coming from Uncle Fred.”

  “I thought you liked him.”

  “I do, but you’re all crazy, Brent. Everybody in your damn bloodline.”

  “I tried to explain that to you a long time ago.”

  “Well, try to get your brains out of my pants for five seconds, because I want to explain something.” She told him about the CIA’s alert and the seeming coincidence that the stolen money approximated the cost of the missiles and the nuclear material.

  Brent shot her an appraising glance. “That’s why you didn’t want me to turn myself in.”

  She nodded, “But I don’t have the slightest clue how to prove it.”

  “Biddle is the key,” Brent said. “We have to get to him and make the bastard talk.”

  “Kidnapping,” she said with a nod. “Once again, the sophisticated approach.”

  “I can’t afford to sit around with my thumb up my ass.”

  “Spoken like a true male.”

  “What the hell would you do?”

  “Get evidence.”

  “Spoken like a true cop.”

  • • •

  A short time later, she walked into her house, tossed her keys on the table, and filled two glasses with ice. Exhaustion and stress had put her beyond the reach of caffeine. Cold water was a last resort.

  Brent followed her and collapsed in one of the kitchen chairs, resting his head on his arms.

  “Don’t fall asleep,” Maggie said. “We have to go through the address book.”

  “I’m just resting my eyes,” he said.

  “Like you were on the road,” she said, a reference to when he’d dozed and almost run off the soft shoulder.

  “Exactly like that.” He yawned, shooting his arms across the table so that he sent his cell phone crashing to the floor.

  Maggie bent down to pick up the phone and saw that the back had come off. As she started to put the two pieces back together, she noticed a small chip that had come loose and hung by two thin wires with tiny clips. She put the phone on the table and pointed. “Does that look like it belongs there?”

  Brent stared at the chip and then tried unsuccessfully to push it back into the rest of the tightly packed innards so that it fit. “Give me your phone,” he said after a second. She handed it over, and he removed the back. Together they looked at its symmetrically fitted guts. “I wondered about this the other night, but I was in too much of a panic to focus.”

  He turned his phone on then pulled a scrap of paper from his wallet. He dialed the scrawled phone number, pressed send and listened. “No answer,” he said. He picked up Maggie’s cell phone, dialed the same number, and held it out so she could hear. After several rings she heard a voice say, “FBI.”

  He hung up then stared again at the small chip that dangled from his phone. “I bet this redirected my calls.”

  “It probably also tracked you,” Maggie said.

  “I bet all my phones were fixed. My office would have been easy, and my apartment . . .” He glanced up at her then away.

  Something in his eyes told her that whatever happened in his apartment had involved another woman. She felt a sudden hot flash of jealousy. To cover it, she stood and went to the sink.

  Brent gripped the chip in his fingers ready to pull it out. “We have to assume they can still track us.”

  “Don’t!” she said. “There’s a better way.” She told him she’d be right back then took the cell phone outside, climbed in her car and drove six blocks to Joe Spedowski’s house. It was three a.m., but Spud was recently divorced and lived alone. She went up on his porch and rang the buzzer. He jerked it open a moment later wearing threadbare pajama bottoms and scratching his hairy stomach. “DeVito!” he grumbled. “This better be good.”

  “I need a favor.” She handed him the cell phone, said she needed him to keep it with him on his rounds.

  “Lemme guess,” he said, as he turned it over and eyed the dangling chip. “It’s bugged.”

  “I think it’s a tracking device.”

  “If I should run into the trackee?”

  “Wear your body armor. Call for backup.”

  His eyes opened wide. “You gonna give me any more information?”

  “Can’t.”

  “You owe me one.”

  “I owe you more than one.”

  He scowled, closed the door, and she got back in her car. A few minutes later when she walked back into her kitchen, Brent was going through the entries in Reverend Turner’s address book. He pointed to one under the letter G—the initials GA and a number with a 212 area code. “Fred Wofford’s direct line at Genesis Advisors!” he said triumphantly.

  Maggie came up behind him and rested her hands on his shoulders. She let them remain there. It felt selfish, almost wrong, but his muscle and bone felt so substantial and reassuring beneath her fingers. Suddenly, all the things that had pushed them apart seemed insignificant. “Come on,” she said, making her decision.

  “Where to now?” Brent asked.

  “Upstairs to bed. We need sleep.”

  He looked up at her and raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t think I was allowed.”

  “I think you’re pretty harmless tonight.”

  He managed a curious smile. “If I’m not?”


  “Well . . . either way you’re at least going to hold me until the damn alarm goes off.”

  He stood and put his arms around her. Neither of them spoke, and she folded her head into his chest and listened to the insistent thumping of his heart. They stood like that a long time. In spite of the night’s horrors, Maggie felt courage and strength begin to seep back into her bones, as though a rundown battery had suddenly been plugged into its charger.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  PROJECT SEAHAWK, NEWARK, NJ, JULY 1

  ANN JENKINS SAT WITH HER arms folded, her fingernails tucked out of biting range beneath her armpits, as she glared at the papers arrayed in neat piles on her desk. She’d been sitting this way for the past hour and a half, struggling to ignore the fraying tempers and the exhausted faces of people working double and triple shifts, trying to understand what was happening.

  She sat there in perfect stillness, back straight, trying to open her mind. Screw it, she decided after a few more minutes as she stood and started pacing. Nobody had invented the mantra that could take the place of a strong cigarette or at least a Hershey Bar with Almonds.

  Of course—her typical luck—the candy machine downstairs was on the blink. At two a.m. nothing was open beside an all-night place about four blocks away, and she’d need an Uzi to shoot her way through the zombies on Newark’s streets at this hour of the morning. Since she didn’t have time to waste filling out paperwork on the resulting body count, she was staying put.

  She stuck a finger in her mouth and tried to chew a piece of nail, but no luck, not even a sliver left to bite. She gave up and focused her eyes again on the pile topped by the CIA memo. Beneath it was everything she’d been able to dig up on the Wahaddi Brotherhood, which considering the CIA’s extremely negative view of the organization, wasn’t much. What she had, however, detailed the gradual choking off of the Brotherhood’s bank accounts in the years following 9/11, and also conveyed the strong suspicion that a major Saudi family with strong U.S. economic and political ties—name deleted—had been responsible for much or most of the funding.