Gingerly edging his way back up towards the elevator lobby, Alt moved to improve his firing angle. He stepped back with his right foot, the rifle aimed up at the parking landing. As he stepped back, he could see more of the landing. He stepped back again and could see even more. As he stepped back once more, he saw McRyan’s hands and weapon pointed out towards the parked cars scanning the ramp. One more step back. He planted his right foot and heard glass crunch under his feet. He fired.
The bullets ripped at the loose right sleeve of Mac’s windbreaker as he dove back to his left, and the shots flew over his head. His service weapon was a popgun next to that damn assault rifle. The shots stopped, and he heard running again. Alt was going for the bottom. He had to be, it was the only way out.
Mac gave chase, hitting the third elevator level, and pausing briefly. He could still hear Alt running a whole level below him.
He kept after him, going back east to the fourth parking level and made the turn at a sprint back down to the last elevator landing. He turned to his right and stopped. In twenty feet he would be exposed coming down the last walking ramp. Alt was already in the cars he thought, waiting in ambush for him.
Mac quickly assessed his options. The sirens were way in the distance, although it was hard to tell eighty-feet below the main street level now. He looked at the last thirty feet of walking ramp. At the bottom on the right side of the cement half wall was a large square pillar. If he could reach the pillar at the bottom, he’d have cover. Mac stuffed the gun in his pants and crab-walked sideways down the walking ramp, staying below the top of the half wall.
At the bottom, Mac lay on his belly and pushed himself to the edge of the pillar and peeked around the corner.
Alt got down to the last level of the ramp and ran straight into the sea of cars and trucks. He needed to find something to hot wire. A white Chevy Impala was in the far row, near the exit for the ramp, the perfect car to boost. But McRyan was coming, and Alt had to take care of him first. He got to the third row of cars and ducked behind a Ford F-150 pickup with a camper top. The position left him a good angle at the walking ramp. McRyan had to come down, and he’d hit him when he did. He heard McRyan get to the last landing. Then the running stopped.
Alt trained the rifle at the walkway, waiting for McRyan to come. But he didn’t. The assassin edged out a little from the back of the truck, looking at the ramp, scanning from the pillar at the bottom, back up the walking ramp and then back down to the pillar. Where was he?
Mac saw the feet move, black dress shoes, next to a pickup truck with a camper top. He quietly pushed himself back and rolled to a sitting position. He set his gun in his hands and pushed himself up, his back against the pillar. He had more protection if he turned to his left, the half wall protecting his lower half, and he could duck behind it if need be. If he turned right, he would be totally exposed. He exhaled, turned to his left and fired.
The shots hit the camper top. Mac knew he missed, but he had position now and could wait him out. “Alt,” he called out, “there’s no way out of here.”
Sirens in the distance were louder now, zeroing in on their position. “The cavalry’ll be here any minute.”
Alt was trapped. McRyan knew it too and was calling out to him.
Then he heard it to his left, to the west, and he had new life. A hundred feet away a car pulled into the ramp.
Alt took off at a full sprint, his weapon up, pointed at the car, a hostage, and keys-a way out.
Mac saw it too and was out from behind the pillar, running at a full sprint, firing at Alt, missing wildly. He got off three shots before his clip ran out. He reached with his left hand into his back pocket and grabbed his last clip, looked down briefly, popped it back in and raised his gun again looking for Alt. The killer had stopped and was facing him. Mac dove away, but it was too late. He took a round in the left shoulder.
Alt knew he’d hit McRyan. He pivoted to run towards the woman again. Then to his right, another vehicle came down the spiral ramp, McRyan’s Explorer. Riley, was in the passenger seat, a gun drawn, scanning the garage. Alt fired at the Explorer, causing it to swerve left and careen into a parked car. Then a shot came from the right. Alt pivoted back that way.
Mac pushed up with his right arm and fired. His first shot missed. As Alt turned back towards him, Mac’s second shot caught Alt in the left shoulder, jerking his body hard to the left. Mac took a step forward and fired twice more, double tap, into Alt’s chest, sending him flying backwards against the trunk of a parked car.
Mac moved quickly towards Alt, his gun pointed at him the entire time. The assassin was slumped back against the bumper of the car, blood oozing through his white dress shirt, the assault rifle lying by his feet.
With his gun still pointed, Mac approached Alt and kicked the rifle away. The blood was dark, coming from the area of the heart. The sirens in the background would not come soon enough for him. The assassin was still conscious, but his breathing was labored. His head was drooping, but his eyes were looking up at Mac.
The rifle was by his feet, but, while his mind told his arms to move, they wouldn’t. Looking down at his chest, he saw the blood flowing through his shirt. It was dark purple, from the heart. Alt could barely get his breath now. It wouldn’t be long.
The assassin looked up to see McRyan approaching him, gun pointed straight at him. He kicked the rifle away. “How did you know we were coming?” McRyan asked.
Alt smirked, beaten by some Irish flatfoot kid. McRyan asked again, louder, kicking the inside of his right leg, “How did you know we were coming?”
Alt was fading now, things started to blur.
“How did you know we were coming?” Mac shouted a third time, but there was no answer. Alt’s chest stopped heaving, his breathing gave out, and his head fell to the left, resting against the bumper on the car. Mac checked for a pulse. The assassin was dead.
Mac winced in pain. He’d been hit on the top of his left shoulder, where the vest provided little protection. You won’t be lifting weights any time soon, he thought, although it didn’t look too bad, a little blood, it was worse than a graze, more like he was just nicked good. Lich and Riley were walking gingerly toward him, weapons drawn, although there was no need now. He looked beyond them to see his shot up Explorer. Cripes, what a day.
They all walked towards the driver of the car Alt had intended to hijack. She was shaking and crying. Lich opened the back door to her car and helped her sit down. Officers were coming now from both the bottom and top of the ramp. He turned to his friends. They had just saved his life, and he thanked them. “Took you guys long enough.”
“Hey, better late than never, boyo,” Lich replied.
“Yeah, and nice driving too,” Mac replied as he walked to his now totaled SUV.
“Christ Almighty,” Riley hooted. “You save the guy’s life, and he bitches about his precious SUV.”
Mac smirked as he grabbed a turtleneck from the back compartment. Guess the trip up north was out of the question. As he fashioned a sling for his left arm, he reached into the front seat, moved the now deflated airbag from the steering wheel and grabbed his cell phone, wanting to call Sally. “Dick, could the airbag even deploy against your girth?”
“Fuck you,” Lich replied, rubbing his knee. They all shared a pained smile and small laugh. They’d survived.
“Tell you one thing that wasn’t a joke,” Mac said. “They knew we were coming. I tried to ask Alt how they knew, but…”
“Yeah, well we still may have someone who can tell us,” Riles responded.
“Guess who survived our little shootout?” Lich added.
“Who?” Mac asked.
Riley grinned, “Want another shot at Ted Lindsay?”
Chapter Forty-One
“I know who tipped them off.”
Mac was transported to United Hospital. His wound on the top of his left shoulder required thirteen stitches. He wouldn’t be able to use his arm for a week or two. The Emerg
ency Room doctor told him to take it easy, keep his arm in a sling, and he wrote a prescription for pain medication and ordered him to start a physical therapy program in a week or so, once the wound had healed.
Rockford was going to be fine, although he would be laid up for a while. He was raging about the shootout. “Find the mother-fucker who tipped those assholes off,” he said at least a half dozen times.
Two C.I.R.T. officers were in surgery and would be for several hours. The doctors were hopeful, but they both had been hit hard. Several others had been wounded, and the ER was a busy place. Having seen all of his fellow officers lying around with multiple wounds, Mac didn’t feel too bad about his little hit to the shoulder.
Paddy offered them a ride back to the Department of Public Safety Building. As they walked to Paddy’s cruiser, Mac pulled out his cell phone, and cleared the last call, the one Sally had made while they were driving downtown a few hours earlier. She answered on the first ring. She was calm on the other end, but Mac could hear the relief in her voice.
“You won’t believe what we have been finding!” she said excitedly.
“What?”
“I’ll show you when you get here. But one thing I will tell you is that those guys at PTA had electronic surveillance on both your place and mine.”
“What? You gotta be shittin’ me.”
“I’ll tell you all about it when you get here.”
Mac was pissed again. Well the boys at PTA wouldn’t be bugging any more places. Mac was sure of that. They pulled into the parking garage and the chief and Peters were waiting for them.
“I sure am glad to see you boys in one piece,” the chief said, shaking each of their hands. “Well done. Well done.” He took a long, concerned look at Mac in his sling. “Boyo, you sure you should be here?”
“I’ll be fine, Chief,” Mac replied, holding up a vial of pain medication. “Where’s Lindsay?”
“We’ve got him in an interview room, waiting for you. I figure you guys have more than earned the first shot at him. But first, why don’t you see what we’ve found.”
They took a waiting elevator up to the chief’s office. When they entered, Sally saw Mac in the sling and came to him. She touched him lightly on the left arm and looked him in the eye and gave him a little smile. Mac smiled back, his look telling her he was okay.
“Let me show you what we’ve found,” she said, taking him by the right arm. A long folding table had been brought in. The documents from the Cross file were spread out onto the table.
“They’ve been watching you guys for a while,” she said to Mac, Riley and Lich. “When the police searched the PTA building, we found this room down in the bottom of the parking garage. They had surveillance equipment, computers, listening devices, you name it, and they were watching, especially Mac and even me,” Sally said to everyone. “We found a few guys down there who were part of the operation. We have them in custody. They’ve also given us the names and aliases of a few others. The department, the state police, and the FBI have that information, and we’re on the lookout for all of them.”
“Holy cow,” Riles replied, a look of amazement on his face.
“Yeah, pretty amazing what they were up to. But they had good reason to be watching. They were up to some nasty stuff with this Cross business.” She laid it out for everyone. Cross had been an operation run out of a facility in West Virginia. Lindsay, Alt, and company were selling arms, ammunition, communications equipment, and other military hardware out the backdoor. The FBI was already looking at the log, and it appeared the hardware had been sold to groups who weren’t exactly friends of the United States.
“They made millions on this stuff,” Sally said. “It looks like they shut it down around the time of the September 11th attacks.”
“This file is what Landy Stephens gave to Jones then?” Lich asked waving to the documents on the table.
“We think so,” Sally replied. “Jones either wouldn’t play ball with them, or they didn’t give her the chance too.”
“So, they took her out,” Riles replied.
“Yeah,” Mac added. “But before they could, she shared this information with Claire Daniels, so she had to go too.”
“Did they kill Senator Johnson?” Lich asked.
“Yup. We found a computer guy down in that little room, and he’s singing. Says they killed Jones, Daniels, and the senator. He also worked the surveillance system at Victory Ramp so we couldn’t see that Alt guy shoot Knapp.”
“The senator was just a patsy in all this, then, huh?” Lich asked.
“Yes,” Sally replied. “What a plan. They kill Jones, making it look like the work of Knapp. They kill Daniels and pin it on the senator. Before the senator can clear his name, they kill him and make it look like a suicide. They kill Knapp before we can talk to him, thinking he’ll never have the chance to deny he killed Jones.”
“Except Mac found this file and that DVD system at Daniels’ place, and we got ’em. Hell, if you weren’t onto it all along,” the chief replied, a smile on his face. “Your dad would have been proud today, Mac, very proud.”
“Thanks, Chief,” Mac replied quietly, trying to keep his emotions in check.
“So, are the feds going to come in and louse this up, prosecute these guys for espionage or something?” Lich asked.
“We’ll work all that out,” Flanagan replied. “You boys don’t worry about that stuff. Ms. Kennedy and I will handle that.”
“There’s still one thing we don’t know,” Mac said. “These bastards knew we were coming. I want to go see Lindsay and find out how.”
“Have at him, boys,” the chief replied.
Ted Lindsay was sitting in a cinder-block interview room. There were no windows, just a bright overhead light. He was sitting in a metal chair, his right arm handcuffed to the table. He was still in his dress suit, but it was rumpled now, with blood spattered on his lapels and white dress shirt. His tie was off kilter. He had a fat lip and bruising over his eyes and along the left side of his face.
Captain Peters joined the three of them in the interview room, carrying a plastic bag that contained Lindsay’s personal affects. There was a wallet, watch, keys, and his cell phone.
Mac sat in the center of the table, Lich and Riley on either side of him. Peters stood behind them. Mac thought back to the interview with Lindsay from a week before, when the bastard had a smirk on his face and answers for everything.
“Tables have turned here a little bit haven’t they, Mr. Lindsay?” Mac quipped.
Lindsay didn’t respond.
“We’ve got you, at a minimum, for the murders of Claire Daniels, Jamie Jones, Senator Mason Johnson, and Dirk Knapp-and those are just the ones we know about. So we have you for that. And the feds?” Mac shook his head, taunting. “They’re not real happy with you right now. They’re going to want to spend a lot of time with you. I doubt we’ll have any objection to spending the rest of your life at the federal pen in Marion. Selling your country out with that Cross business-not too good for you there, Teddy boy,” Mac said in a semi-mocking tone. Lich and Riley just stared at Lindsay.
“Lawyer,” was Lindsay’s response.
Mac grabbed for the plastic bag of belongings while Peters jumped in. “Later. First you’re going to tell us how you knew we were coming.”
“Lawyer.”
“No!” Riley howled. “Tell us who tipped you off.”
“Lawyer.”
Lich snorted. “Boys, he looks like he was roughed up riding around in the van today don’t you think.”
“I do,” Riles responded. Peters nodded. They all moved around to Lindsay’s side of the table.
“I don’t think anyone would notice if we added a few more bruises.”
Fear overtook Lindsay’s face. He pulled at his handcuffed arm, trying to get away. It wouldn’t be a fair fight.
Mac ignored them and looked at the last call made on Lindsay’s cell phone, 11:34 a.m., just before they left for the PT
A building. The number was familiar to him. He’d seen it somewhere. He sat back in his chair, looking at the number and ran it around in his head. He pulled out his own cell phone, pressed menu and looked at the previous calls made on his phone. A smile creased his face.
“Boys,” Mac said.
They ignored him or didn’t hear him, moving in on Lindsay.
“BOYS!”
They stopped and looked back at him, annoyed, fists still raised. “What?” Peters asked.
“I know who tipped them off.”
Chapter Forty-Two
“You have the right to remain silent.”
Chief Flanagan and Sally joined Mac, Riley, Lich, and Peters on the ride over to the Ramsey County Courthouse. A squad car was leading in front of them and two were behind. They pulled up onto the curb and filed out of the van. The chief led them through the doors inside, where the crowd that was milling around stopped what they were doing to watch. Given the day’s events, Flanagan and the rest of them were immediately recognized.
They took the elevator up to the tenth floor and the District Attorney’s office. Sally led them through and past the reception desk. The receptionist started to say something, but then just watched them go by.
Sally walked them right to Helen Anderson’s office. Anderson was at her desk, on the phone when they barged in. She looked up to see them. Held up her hand for them to wait while she finished her call, oblivious to what was happening. Mac walked over to her phone and cut the call off.
The St. Paul Conspiracy Page 34
