“A white camper truck!” Daniels said, pounding his fist on the door.
“Are you thinking what I am thinking?” Charlie asked.
“That body shop fire,” Barnett agreed. “But Marchetti will never listen if we don't get some proof.” He grabbed Charlie’s I-Phone, opened Google, went back to the online NCIC entry for the contact officer’s phone number in Columbia, and dialed. “Detective Sawyer? This is Special Agent Ed Barnett with the FBI. I saw your NCIC entry about the body shop fire in Columbia. Can you fill me in on the investigation?” As he listened, Barnett quickly scribbled some notes on the Virginia road map. “Are you at the scene right now? We’ll be there in about ten minutes. Can we land a helicopter near there?… Great! See you then.”
Finally, Barnett put the phone down. “It’s a rundown body shop that burned to the ground late yesterday. Arson. And guess what? Inside, they found a beat-up Chevy with Massachusetts plates, a U-Haul trailer, and three bodies burned to a crisp.”
“That was what Al-Bari drove down here,” Kamal added.
“Why’d it take so long to put the damned bulletin out?” Charlie asked.
“Apparently, the place was full of grease and oil. Everything’s charred and burnt to a crisp in there. It took a long time to put the fire out, even longer to get the State arson people in and sort it all out,” Barnett answered. “The three bodies are locals — the guy who owned the place and two others.”
Barnett quickly folded the map and jumped into the Bell Jet Ranger with the others. It took fifteen minutes to fly from Newport News to Columbia, where the smoldering ruins of Dante's Body Shop could be seen from the air. Kamal landed the helicopter in a stubbly cornfield across the road. Barnett and the others ducked under the swirling blades and ran to a group of Virginia State Police, Columbia city cops and detectives, and city firemen, who were still sifting through the burnt wreckage.
One of the locals in a blue suit separated himself from the others and walked up to Barnett. "I am Detective Sawyer of the Columbia Police Department,” he said as he extended his hand. “Judging from your fast ride, I assume you are Agent Barnett.”
“This guy Dante, any idea what he was into?”
“The place just cooled down enough for us to start diggin'.”
“No time, Detective. We think the guy’s out to kill the President in a couple of hours.”
“Old Rufus? No way he’d try something like that. Besides, he’s dead.”
“No, the guy he did some work for. We think he’s the one who killed Dante and the other two.”
“Well, Rufus got himself into a lot of things over the years, mostly penny ante, but he was a greedy bastard. I suppose if someone came at him with enough money…”
“Where were the bodies?”
“In the grease pit. Looks like they were dumped there, one on top of the other, along with a big dog.”
“Yeah, that fits. Our guy’s a stone killer.” Barnett said. “Okay, let’s start with what’s different here. Show us what else you found.”
“Well,” Sawyer scratched his head. “Other than enough used car parts to outfit a Third World country, they had the big welder out. We found some barely used off-the-shelf shock absorbers and empty boxes for some heavy-duty ones. And there were empty crates from some kitchen cabinets and skylights. Oh, and a whole lot of half-inch steel plate, bits and pieces, like it had all been cut up.”
“Skylights, shocks, and steel plate? In an auto body shop?”
“They were the operable, crank type, three feet by six feet. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, either.”
“What about the steel plate?”
“Yeah, that’s weird, too. Thick stuff, half inch. What we found were scraps mostly, but the tire tracks outside were deep, like from a heavy truck.”
Barnett walked over to the burnt, twisted wreckage and the others followed. Daniels bent down, picked up a blackened piece of steel plate, and turned to Kamal and Barnett as he studied it. “Half-inch steel plate? What the hell would they want that for?”
“Either for armor plating or for support,” Kamal offered.
“Think he’s making himself a tank?” Charlie asked.
“Oh, and we found these in the office. They’re a bit burnt around the edges,” Sawyer said as he handed Barnett three blueprints, with about a third of the sheet missing. “They fell under the desk in the office and were protected from the worst of the fire.”
Barnett spread the sheets across the hood of Sawyer’s car, as they all bent over them, turning the sheets around and around, trying to figure out what they were looking at.
“Here’s the roof profile and cross-section,” Charlie said as he stabbed the sheet with a finger, “that’s where he added the skylights. Big ones that open in the middle.”
Kamal held up another sheet, “The steel plates were used to reinforce the floor.”
“Look at these hydraulic jacks at the corners,” Barnett pointed out on another sheet.
“And these steel brackets in the center of the floor plate,” Kamal noted.
Daniels nodded. “From the width, I’ll bet they lock down the mortar’s base plate.”
“He has no intention of setting the mortar up out in the woods,” Kamal said as the pieces suddenly fell into place. “It will be fired from inside, hidden there, out of sight.”
“He ain’t makin’ a tank, he’s makin’ himself a weapons carrier, like one of those Army APCs,” Charlie stabbed his finger on the drawing.
“And nobody will know it’s there, until… oh, damn!” Daniels summed it up perfectly.
Kamal said, “It won’t take him seven to ten minutes to set up and get ready to fire.”
“All he has to do is open the roof,” Barnett said as they turned and jumped inside the helicopter. As it lifted off from the cornfield in Columbia and raced south, he looked at his watch. “We’ve gotta find Hastings, quick.”
“And that ass Marchetti. We have very little time left,” Kamal added.
The President’s long black Cadillac limousine was third in the six-car convoy that wound its way along the Colonial Parkway from Williamsburg to Yorktown. It would take fifteen minutes or less and Wagner savored each of them as he gazed out at the spectacular beauty of the bright Virginia foliage in October. The trees curved in over the roadway to form a long arch of reds, yellows, and greens. He only wished he could give it his full concentration and just sit back quietly and enjoy the view, but he could not. As he told the Congressional leaders a half hour before, “It has been very difficult for us to reach agreement, and then only in the very last few hours. Had we known more earlier, we’d have told you, but we could delay no longer in going public.” Wagner knew he owed them nothing. They should be glad someone was finally grabbing the reins and trying to get something done. Besides, no one in Congress could be counted on to keep a secret for ten minutes, much less for support when the issue got thorny.
The convoy finally left the tunnel of trees and broke out into the bright sunlight as it crossed Indian Field Creek and reached the York River. The parkway skirted along the high bluffs and the riverbank to his left. He looked out on dozens of sailboats, large and small, and several modern US Navy ships anchored at the Weapons Station and along the channel. It was a beautiful sight.
Unfortunately, his thoughts kept turning back to the Middle East. The Europeans were a mixed bag of support. The British would be with him. They were the only ones who appreciated the issues, were loyal, and had the good manners not to criticize others for what they themselves were unable to do. Ever since the Falklands, they would do what we asked even if it hurt. Not so with the French or Germans. With the French, it was always ego. They were against any idea or success that wasn’t theirs, where they couldn’t play both sides against each other, or where they couldn’t scuttle it. With the Germans, it was always more venal. They were disturbed because it might help the dollar and undercut their own dreams of economic supremacy in Europe. So to hell with bo
th of them.
Once past the Naval Weapons Station with its smartly saluting Marine guards, the convoy again plunged into the deep woods. Nearing Yorktown, they crossed above Route 17 and drove on through the entrance of the National Park. They finally came to a halt in the driveway of the Visitors Center, where Wagner alighted to the warm greetings of Governor Lane of Virginia and a long line of local dignitaries. Wagner walked along the receiving line, chatting and pumping hands like any good politician working the crowd.
The sun had beat down on the poorly ventilated camper for six hours now with no relief; and as the morning wore on, it became oppressively hot and stuffy inside. Al-Bari and Arazi sat on the floor with their shirts off and bare backs against the front wall, but it did not help. Ideally, they would open a window or at least crack the skylights, but they did not dare, not yet. Any movement or noise at this late hour could give them away, so they sat, feeling the perspiration run down their chests in rivulets. Finally, Al-Bari looked at his watch and nudged Arazi. “It is time, Cousin,” he said quietly. “Let us get the equipment set up, it is time.”
Unlocking the large storage cabinets that stretched down each side of the interior of the camper, they began the well-drilled routine that would transform the recreational vehicle into a tactical weapon fire control center. It was basic geometry. When he parked it in the campground the night before, Al-Bari used the transit and the tall white Victory Monument across the river to align the truck so that its centerline pointed exactly at the Visitors Center. The first part to come out from under the cabinets was the mortar’s heavy, circular base plate, which Arazi held in place while Al-Bari bolted it into the floor mounts. From the back of the cabinet, they untied the five-foot-long mortar tube and rolled it out into the middle of the floor. While Arazi held its lower end in the socket of the base plate, Al-Bari muscled it upright so Arazi could attach the supports to the tube. After one last check, he took a deep breath and attached the transverse and vertical adjustment wheels. Broad smiles lit up their faces as they worked flawlessly, just as they had in countless practices.
Looking up at the barrel of the weapon, Al-Bari laughed aloud. It looked so gangly and awkward, ready to topple over. To the trained eye of a soldier, however, it was a thing of beauty, designed for a single lethal purpose. He thought it was like seeing a stork walking in the Lebanese coastal marshes back home, versus seeing that same gangly stork soaring high overhead in the sky, doing what Allah intended it to do.
Al-Bari quickly resumed his work. His target was the podium. Using the tables he had created and rechecked hundreds of times, he lay in the precise elevation and deflection settings on the tube, while Arazi attended to the heavy ammunition. He pulled out each round, screwed its fuze detonator into the nose, and placed it on the cushioned bench, facing outward, six on one side and six on the other, where they could be easily reached, raised, and dropped down the barrel. The first time they practiced firing, their motions were unskilled and lacked synchronization. Hours later, they became crisp and precise. The American Field Manual told them that the maximum rate of fire for an experienced crew was eighteen rounds per minute. They had twelve rounds to fire, and Al-Bari’s plan was to get them all in the air before the first round struck. Each round carried over seven and one-half pounds of high explosive. The wind, recoils, the heating and warping of the barrel, the rocking of the truck, the small variances in the charges, and a hundred other factors would give him all the shot spread he needed and bracket the Victory Center, the seating area, the crowd, the TV trucks, and the podium in a firestorm of death and destruction.
Since they would not be adjusting the settings between shots, instead of using the conventional method of one man dropping the rounds down the barrel and the other passing them to him, they would use a much more dangerous system where they would stand on opposite sides of the tube and alternately pick them up and drop them down the barrel — very dangerous, but effective. Al-Bari would call the cadence. “One,” Arazi would pick up one of the heavy shells, left hand under its top and right hand over its base. “Two,” lift and pivot with the bomb at port arms. “Three,” place the base of the shell over the tube and release it, dropping his hands down and away from the tube. “Four,” pivot back to the bench for the next one. The cadence was precise. He dropped on “four” and Al-Bari dropped on “two.” They practiced it over and over, followed the sequence like two bobbing robots.
“Let’s get the jacks into place,” Al-Bari said as he opened the small control box. Wiping his sweating palms on his slacks, he looked at the four toggle switches and the leveling bubbles. Raising the first switch, he heard a faint hum as the right rear jack slid down into place. He turned it off as soon as the corner of the camper shifted slightly and he heard the foot plate crunch into the gravel. With one in place, he then activated each of the others. Ready for the final test, he pushed all four of them up together. Al-Bari grinned as the floor beneath them slowly rose up about two inches. One by one, he raised and lowered them until the floor was perfectly level. Arazi jumped up and down on the solid steel platform. “It works! It really works,” he laughed.
Noticing the time, Al-Bari turned his attention to connecting the wires for the radio-controlled detonators for the explosives they had placed under the bridge, while Arazi went back to the side benches and pulled out two deadly Heckler and Koch MP-5 submachine guns. They were stubby, with fold-up metal stocks and thick, thirty-round magazines. Balancing one lightly in his hand, Arazi knew these put out a quick, steady stream of bullets.
Finally finished, Al-Bari smiled as he looked at his watch. It was 1:35. He reached over and turned on all three battery-powered Hitachi TVs mounted on the front wall.
Twenty-five minutes to go.
They were ready.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Yorktown, Friday, October 19, 1:40 p.m.
Barnett reached Marchetti on the radio, but there was no time for a full explanation. As soon as the helicopter set down in the grass near the Moore House, Eddie Barnett, Frank Daniels, and Charlie Wisniewski jumped out and charged across the front lawn. Barnett stopped Kamal at the helicopter’s door and told him to wait. “Stay here and keep it hot. We won’t be long, and we gotta get back in the air.”
As they ran through the front door into the Secret Service’s Control Center, Daniels screamed, “Marchetti! Where are you?” and ran to the wall map. “Get Hastings, too!”
“Who the hell do you think you are, Daniels? This is my Area of Operations, not yours. What’s all this crap over the radio about changing our search patterns because of some camper?” Marchetti shouted angrily as he stormed out of his office. “The President is about to come out to the reviewing stand and I don’t have time to piss around with your half-baked theories about…”
“Shut up and listen for a minute,” Barnett fired back. “We were wrong about the U-Haul. He dumped that and he now has a truck, a camper that’s been rebuilt to carry the mortar.” Turning to face Hastings, he pleaded with both hands and said, “Don’t you see? It’s just like you said; only a fool would try to use a Four-Deuce around here on foot. Well, he’s no fool. He’s reinforced the floor of the truck bed with half-inch steel plate, added heavy duty shocks, leveling jacks, and skylights that open, because he’s going to fire the mortar from inside, just like you do with an armored personnel carrier.”
“What?” Hastings said as his eyes grew wide and he stared at Barnett. “He did?”
Marchetti did not reply. His head whipped around and looked at the map. “Oh, Lord.”
“You said you were combing the woods and the back roads for a place he could get off by himself and set it up,” Barnett said quickly. “Well, that’s exactly where he isn’t. He already has the camper all set up and the mortar is ready to fire. Like a needle in a haystack, he’ll be in the middle of a bunch of vehicles — maybe a parking lot or one of the exhibition areas, maybe a place he just can stop for a moment. That’s all he needs before a dozen 4.2-inch mor
tar rounds start landing on the Victory Center, because your assumptions are all wrong.”
Marchetti stared at the map in panic. “Are… are you sure?”
“Yes,” Charlie replied. “And you can forget about your roadblocks. He’s already here, sitting, and waiting for the show to start.”
Hastings ran his hand across the map and said, “God! We’ve got dozens of campgrounds and parking lots inside the four-mile radius.”
“Then get your helicopters over as many of them as you can,” Barnett said firmly. “Tell them to watch the roofs. One of them is going to open up, real soon. Do it! We are flat out of time.”
Marchetti’s confused gaze scanned across the map. “But… our plan, and…”
Barnett grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around. Looking directly into his eyes, he saw the panic. “Now!” Barnett pleaded, “before it’s too late.” Turning to Hastings, he added, “He didn’t take the wrong weapon, we just didn’t understand his plan.”
Marchetti looked at him for a brief second and then ran into the other room. They heard him order, “Get the choppers on the radio, quick!”
As Wagner stepped out the front door of the Visitors Center into the bright sunlight, the waiting Colonial Fife and Drum Corps began to play. The high-pitched whistles and pounding rhythms were amplified by the overhanging granite portico of the entryway. They played a few bars, and then at the direction of their Drum Major they wheeled smartly to their right, mimicking the finest eighteenth century British traditions. Marching toward the amphitheater, the official party fell in behind, smiling. It was a short walk to the reviewing stand and speaker’s platform. As they walked, Wagner looked back and noticed the dignitaries behind him were chatting and slowly stringing out far to the rear. After what they had just heard, perhaps that was as close as they wanted to get to him. Looking around, he also noticed that the Secret Service agents around him had grown noticeably more tense, fingers on their earpieces, listening intently. The Chief of Detail walked over to him and said, “Sir, we have a situation. We should return to the building until we have it sorted out.”
Aim True, My Brothers Page 26
