Aim True, My Brothers

by William F. Brown

  “You’ll have to stay out of our way.”

  “No problem,” Barnett said reassuringly. “We thought we’d just walk around, maybe check things out from the air. That way, we’ll be out of your hair and you could reach us by radio if there’s anything we can do. Okay?”

  Marchetti paused. Barnett could tell he was debating the harm they might cause versus the flak he could get from the top floor if he followed his natural inclination to tell them to get the hell out of his operation. “Okay, but stay out of our search patterns. We are rotating our aircraft up there, and with civilian flights out of Patrick Henry, the F-18s from Langley Air Force Base, and the Army rotaries from Fort Eustis, it can get a bit crowded.”

  “Absolutely, whatever you say.” Barnett said. “Now, can we discuss the mortar that Al-Bari brought with him? I’m sure it poses some unique problems.”

  “Agent Barnett,” Marchetti cast a sideways glance at Kamal. “We don’t discuss presidential security with foreign nationals. I’m sure you can understand that.”

  “Totally,” Barnett broke in. “But that’s not what we’re asking for. We’re only interested in Al-Bari and the mortar. After all, he stole it from a US Armory and that is well within the FBI’s operational charge. You protect the President, as I’m sure you will, but I want to catch Al-Bari. There are a lot more targets he can go after once you frustrate him here.”

  “Okay. Okay, I guess we owe you that much. Look, I’m busy right now, but let me have you talk to Major Hastings here. Major!” he called out to the other room. “He’s a weapons specialist we called in from Fort Benning.” Turning to the tall, uniformed officer who joined the group, Marchetti said, “Major, tell them how we’re handling this Al-Bari thing and the mortar. Sorry, but I’ve got to run.”

  The four of them watched Marchetti dart into the other room and close the door. Barnett could see the look of amusement on the major’s face. “Anyway, let’s see,” Hastings said. “Do you know much about the weapon itself?”

  “Me, no. Daniels fired one in training, but I think that was a long time ago.”

  “Doesn’t matter. They haven’t changed. The Infantry School loves to let the trainees fire a few rounds at an old house down there. They never hit it, but it blows a big hole in the cornfield and makes a lot of noise.”

  “Yeah, but what if they managed to hit it? What would it do?”

  “A Four-Deuce round? Oh, it would have blown the hell out of the house, probably flattened it.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you, Major? He’s got a dozen rounds and it scares the hell out of us.”

  Hastings looked at them and smiled. “If they can’t hit anything with it at Benning, what chance does your pal Al-Bari stand? Look, it’s a unique weapon. It’s very heavy, very hard to move around, and very hard to get even minimally proficient with. That takes practice and experience. With a well-trained crew, maybe. But two Arabs, out in the woods? I doubt if they could put a round within a thousand meters of a target.”

  “Major,” Barnett warned, “please don’t underestimate him.”

  “Oh, I’m not. I’ve spent a few tours with irregular troops, and they can be excellent. But that’s not the problem. It’s the weapon. If your man Al-Bari had taken an eighty-one millimeter or even a sixty millimeter mortar, I’d be worried, but not a Four-Deuce.” Hastings said emphatically.

  “Why?” Daniels asked sharply as he saw his early retirement coming.

  “It’s too damn big and heavy. Assembled with the base and supports, it weighs almost seven hundred pounds, and the shells are almost twenty-seven pounds each. Just how far do you think two men can get with all that stuff in rough, wooded terrain like this? If they are carrying it around in that U-Haul trailer, they need a road and they’ve got to find a place to set it up, probably in a clearing, on the road shoulder, or maybe even on the pavement itself. They need flat ground and the time to adjust and level it, set out an aiming stake, and do the math and triangulation. With a Four-Deuce that takes a bare minimum of seven minutes, maybe ten for amateurs, and we aren’t going to give it to him.”

  Hastings paused as he looked at the wilting expressions on Barnett and Daniels. “If he had an eighty-one, I’d be scared. It shoots almost as far and he could have taken it anywhere. The shell is a lot smaller, but he could carry more of them and they make a nice bang. A Four-Deuce is like a vest pocket howitzer and has about the same punch as a 105; but you don’t walk around with one. When we take one out to the field, it is permanently mounted inside an armored personnel carrier with a crew of five men to fire it.”

  Barnett saw the man had a point. “Well, if he can pull it off, what’s its range?”

  “The absolute maximum range is out to four miles, but if you want to hit anything, one and a half to two miles is optimum, maybe three at the outside.”

  “Wow, that’s a lot of ground to cover,” Barnett whistled.

  “Not really,” Hastings said as he turned to a large wall map, which hung behind him. “If you overlay a one to three mile band going out from the Visitors Center, that is our basic zone of air search, where we have all the roads cordoned off, the parking lots, and all the nooks and crannies in the woods being watched. As of this morning, the bridge over to Gloucester is closed, and we put roadblocks out over there too. The air units are up watching the roads and open spots within the belt, but the one real advantage we have is that most of the land around here is part of a series of closed Army and Navy bases and a National Park. There are very few public roads out there. Even if he does get within range, there’s not enough time for him to unload and set up. Now that he has lost his element of surprise, for which we sincerely thank you — me in particular, since it would end up as my problem — it won’t work. Not even close. Do you know what I think has already happened?”

  “What?” asked Barnett.

  “I think he made his plan before he saw this place, with the crowds, the traffic, the checkpoints, and the crooked roads, and realized it wouldn’t work. This is an away game for him. It isn’t Iraq or Afghanistan, or any other place he’s familiar with. You’re the one who said he isn’t stupid. That’s why I think he made a tactical decision to turn around and go home.” Hastings said as he looked slowly around at three silent faces as much as to say, “class dismissed.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Yorktown, Friday, October 19, 12:30 p.m.

  Barnett felt both deflated and stupid as he left the Moore House and began to walk toward the crowded grounds around the Visitors Center with Charlie, Frank Daniels, and Kamal.

  “You think they’re right?” Charlie asked.

  “And we’re wrong?” Barnett replied. “It isn’t always either, or.”

  “It’s not, huh.”

  “No. Not this time.”

  As they walked through the old battlefield, they passed parking lots full of buses and official vehicles, the old trenches, and cannon emplacements. In front of the Visitors Center stood a large, flag-draped reviewing stand with an elevated podium at its center, and in front of the podium lay a sea of folding chairs, row after row and section after section of them. Patrolling the perimeter, they saw dozens of uniformed State and local police, military, and dark-suited Secret Service agents. They were everywhere — armed and serious, with most wearing body armor. To the rear of the seating area, Barnett saw TV vans with the logos of all the major networks. They had their cameras set up, with a spaghetti bowl of wires and cables running from the vans to their generators and pole-mounted satellite dishes. In the middle of the row, he saw the big eye of the CBS Network van, and the back of a tall blonde carrying a clipboard. He hurried over to her, but as she turned toward him and walked to the trailer, he realized it was not Louise. Frustrated, he sped up anyway, and reached the door ahead of her.

  “Have you seen Louise Taylor around?” he asked.

  “Louise the Squeeze?” she answered. “She was on the Groupie Bus this morning, dogging Wagner. But don't worry. Like a yeast in
fection, she'll be back.”

  Charlie was behind him, cracking up. “ ‘Louise the Squeeze’?” he chortled.

  “Look, if you see her, ask her to call Eddie on his cell,” he put on his best smile and asked the blonde. “It’s kind of important.”

  “Well, that’s too bad,” the blonde replied invitingly as she looked Barnett up and down. “All that… wasted on a wannabe.”

  Eddie smiled and quickly backed away, pulling Charlie away with him.

  “Wasted… all that wasted,” Charlie kept mumbling, shaking his head, laughing.

  “Oh, shut up.”

  They rejoined the other two and went back to the center of the field of folding chairs. Everywhere they looked, they saw uniforms and cordons of security. Barnett looked up as three Army Apache helicopters passed overhead. Turning his head to the north toward the river, it was hard to avoid the Coleman Memorial Bridge and the tall white 1881 Victory Memorial. Barnett stopped and cocked his head. He turned to Kamal and Daniels. “You guys were in the Army, what did you think about what Hastings said?”

  “Hastings?” Daniels paused before he replied. “Him and Marchetti, they’re awfully sure of themselves.”

  Kamal nodded. “It has been said, ‘There is nothing more dangerous than sincere ignorance.’”

  “Where’s that from?” Charlie asked, “The Koran?”

  “No, from your Martin Luther King.”

  Charlie stopped walking and turned his head for a long, panoramic look around the old battlefield. “We're missing something here, Eddie,” he said.

  “Agreed,” Daniels joined in. “If your terrorist is as good an infantry tactician as everyone claims he is, and if he picked that weapon and this place, then it is the height of arrogance to dismiss him as an amateur the way they seem to be doing in there,” he said as he nodded toward the Moore House.

  “Perhaps they are the ones who do not understand,” Kamal said.

  “Well, the FBI and Secret Service haven’t heard a peep.” Daniels said.

  “Agent Barnett, you have other contacts with the state and local police,” Kamal said. “Your badge can do wonders to open doors. Perhaps there are some bits and pieces out there on the wind, things no one else has put together yet.”

  “Charlie, was there anything else on the NCIC list?” Barnett asked.

  Charlie pulled out his I-phone and began fumbling with it, pushing buttons. “I hate this goddamned thing,” he muttered. “I really need to retire.”

  Barnett took the phone from his hand and went online to the Virginia page of the NCIC National Crime Information Center crime reporting site.

  “That thing’s usually a bunch of crap anyway, and out of date,” Charlie grumbled.

  “All depends on who put it in,” Barnett countered. “But you could be right. There is a bunch of crap,” he said as he scrolled down the pages. “Well, here’s one from yesterday — there was a fire at a low-rent auto body shop in Columbia, three bodies found, suspicious origin, and they’re still digging through the ashes.” He scrolled further down and said, “Hey, here’s something! In Gloucester, they found two guys locked inside a storage shed. They had Massachusetts Driver’s Licenses and Boston IDs. One's dead. The other is in critical condition, and he’s not talking.”

  “Do you remember what the bartender in Boston said?” Kamal asked.

  “He’s in Mary Immaculate Hospital in Newport News.”

  “How come we’re only hearing about this now,” Charlie grumbled.

  “Mary Immaculate is the smallest hospital down here, but it’s the closest to Gloucester. If they took him to Riverside or Sentara, we’d have probably picked it up.”

  “We need to find out what that guy knows, and we are running out of time,” Barnett said as all three of them took off running back to the makeshift heliport at the Moore House. As the Jet Ranger’s powerful Allison turbo shaft engine began to rotate and gain take-off rpm, Kamal glanced around the cockpit until he found the button he was looking for. He pushed it and a small television screen dropped down from the upper bulkhead.

  ‘Sheesh, you guys fly first class,” Charlie said.

  “It is a rental,” Kamal answered as Barnett changed the station to Channel 6. On the screen, the Presidential motorcade pulled into the circular driveway of the white brick Colonial Williamsburg Inn, surrounded by a cheering crowd, magnolia trees, and boxwood hedges. President Wagner got out of his car with a fresh bounce in his stride, smiling, waving, and working the crowd. Around him, a half dozen Secret Service agents in sunglasses stood facing outward, on edge, as they scanned the crowd, chatting into wrist mikes. The camera panned out and the picture on the TV screen widened and took in Louise Taylor standing in the foreground, holding a microphone, while the President continued working the crowd behind her.

  “Isn’t that ‘The Squeeze’ herself?” Charlie asked.

  “Ah, Goddamnit!” Barnett groaned.

  On the television, Louise smiled into the lens and said to her distinguished Network anchor in New York, Peter Grimes, “It’s been a very busy morning for the President here in Williamsburg, Peter, with a flurry of diplomatic meetings regarding Europe and the Middle East. That’s why the President is here at the Williamsburg Inn for a quick lunch with Congressional leaders before his big speech in Yorktown later this afternoon.”

  The camera switched back to the President as he waved, turned, and walked inside.

  “And Peter, the word around town is that the President is announcing a major foreign policy initiative in his speech today. When he does, CBS will be here to bring it to you, live!”

  “Think she’ll stay there in Williamsburg, and not go to Yorktown?” Charlie asked.

  “Not a chance,” Barnett shook his head.

  “What if you asked her to?”

  Barnett just looked at him.

  The Bell Jet Ranger helicopter banked to the right and soared across the York River. At 130 miles per hour, in minutes it was sweeping inland across the Interstate and other busy roads to land on a hospital helipad. The Irishman was in a private room in the small Critical Care ward immediately adjacent to the hospital’s Emergency Room. There was a uniformed hospital security guard sitting in a chair outside the door to the room, reading a NASCAR magazine as Barnett and Daniels flashed their badges and credentials at him.

  “We need to talk to him,” Barnett told the guard, who appeared overwhelmed by the sudden rush of official attention. Before he could answer, the room door opened and a doctor in a white smock stepped into the hallway, holding a thick clipboard and stethoscope.

  “I am Dr. Gupta. May I see those,” he said as he examined both Barnett’s and Daniel’s credentials with care.

  “We need to talk to your patient, doctor.”

  “He is heavily medicated and being prepped for surgery.”

  “I’m afraid it must be now.”

  The doctor looked alternately at Barnett, Daniels, and the IDs, and finally shrugged. “You have two minutes, no more,” he said as he turned away.

  “Wait, what happened to him?” Barnett asked.

  “A severe beating — a badly broken arm, a skull fracture or two, and a concussion. The police found a tire iron lying next to him. That would do it, I believe.”

  “What about the other guy?”

  “No broken bones, but someone thrust a long, pointed object through his eye and on into the brain.”

  “Long and pointed? Like an ice pick,” Kamal asked, as he and Barnett exchanged glances.

  “Perhaps,” the doctor shrugged. “I am getting some coffee. When I get back, I expect him to still be here and you to be gone,” the doctor said as he turned and walked away.

  They walked into the semi-dark room. The Irishman lay on the bed, heavily bandaged and connected to various bottles and electronic monitoring machines. His eyes were half closed, but he appeared awake and he knew they were there.

  “If you’re Mike,” Barnett said to him, “that must be your pal Danny down
in the morgue. Guess that makes you the lucky one. All you get is a bad headache and some help lighting cigarettes for a while.” The Irishman’s eyes filled with hate as he glared up at Barnett, but he said nothing. “Big Pat told us you two tailed the Wog down here and jumped him. Doesn’t look like that worked out too well, did it?” The Irishman was in pain, but his expression grew even angrier. Still, he said nothing. “Bet they’ll get a big laugh up in Chelsea when they hear how you mucked it up, won’t they?”

  “Bugger off!” he growled, red faced. “Nobody’s gonna be doin’ no laughin’.”

  “We want him, not you. You tailed him. Where did he go? Where did they take the mortar?”

  The Irishman turned his eyes away and closed his mouth.

  Kamal closed the room door, walked around the bed, and bent over the prostrate Irishman. He put one hand firmly over the Irishman's mouth, the other on his heavily bandaged arm, and began squeezing and twisting. “We have no time,” the Egyptian said as the Irishman’s eyes filled with pain. “Tell us the truth or I will move these bones around until you beg that doctor to take your arm off.” Wide-eyed, the Irishman nodded frantically, until Kamal lifted his hand off the man’s mouth.

  “Where did he go?”

  “I don’t know, I swear,” he whispered in pain. “They put the goods in that white camper truck they had, and disappeared. I don't know where, I swear it.”

  Barnett and Kamal suddenly looked at each other. “White camper truck? What white camper truck? What happened to Murphy’s wife’s car and the U-Haul?”

  “I don’t know. When they came back to the storage shed, they were drivin’ a white camper, and they were puttin’ the goods inside it.”

  “Tell us about this camper. What did it look like?” Charlie asked.

  “A camper! You know, a pickup truck with one of those big, white box things up in the bed that guys use for fishin' and huntin'. That's all I know, man. I swear it.”

  The four men looked at each other and ran back to the helicopter. Barnett unfolded the Virginia road map and laid it out on the helicopter’s floor.