Jeffers peered at the scope, then said, “I don’t understand all this new computer shit.”
He eased the lid shut, latched it, and said to the others, “I gotta run to the can.”
He took his briefcase with him.
—
When he had gone, Royce looked pensively out the windows toward the Washington Monument. From where they were, in Virginia, they could see about half of it over the trees. Without looking at Thorne, he asked, “Can you give me some odds?”
Thorne nodded. “I’d say for everything included—the man dead, us getting away clean—it’s eighty-five, ninety percent. The problem with an op like this is that all kinds of random shit can interfere. Curious cop, camera we don’t know about, a Secret Service agent who’s too smart…But basically, ninety percent. We’ll never get more than that.”
“Nine chances in ten,” Royce said, and turned his wheelchair around to face the men. “I’ve never done a deal that I thought was less than eighty percent to work out—and I’ve never truly lost a big deal.”
—
Lawton Jeffers sat on the toilet with his pants down around his ankles. He’d opened a small leather kit, which sat on top of the briefcase now, and had taken out a needle. He injected himself in the thigh with the cocktail of longevity hormones Dr. Wyeth prepared for all his clients, gasped once when the drug hit, and felt the flush of the growing high.
Then he leaned forward, put his arms on his thighs, his head down, said, “God help me.”
He thought, a few minutes later, as he washed his hands and stared at himself in the bathroom mirror, that God probably wouldn’t bother to help.
He went out into the main room, and Thorne stepped forward to pose the question for the last time: “Shall I move into position, Mr. Vice President?”
Jeffers stared at him, not speaking.
Denyers said, “If you say go, Law, you’re president of the United States in forty-eight hours. And after that, you live forever.”
Jeffers nodded and said to Thorne, “Yes. Go.”
Back in Oklahoma City, back in their rooms, Harmon made a call to Armie, who said he was at his office and that they could come over. Shay, Twist, Harmon, Cruz, and X went. Cade stayed at the hotel, working the Internet, searching for Thorne. They didn’t entirely trust Armie, so at Armie’s office complex, Cruz and X stayed in the truck, circling, ready for an emergency pickup.
A security guard with a navy blue sport coat and khaki slacks met them at the building’s front entrance, gave them ID tags, escorted them to Armie’s office on the fourth floor, and said he’d wait to take them back out.
Armie had a billionaire’s office, but a restrained one, not one from Hollywood, Dallas, or Manhattan. It was done in wood and subdued earth colors, and two assistants and three secretaries worked in small offices outside his private office. A receptionist sat at a large desk in front of the office doors. Most people would not have noticed that the small landscape painting on the entry wall was a real Monet. Twist did, and got so close that his nose was inside the frame.
The receptionist said, with a smile, “You must be Misters Twist and Harmon and Miss Remby.” She didn’t alert Armie to visitors by phone or intercom but by some more secret system, because a second later, Armie came out to meet them and said, “I hope nothing untoward has happened.”
“That would be a vain hope,” Twist said.
“Ah, shit. Come on back.”
Harmon scanned Armie’s private office and said, “I hope you’re not recording this.”
“I’m not,” Armie said.
“That’s good, because I’m going to tell you something that could cause you some problems. If the cops knew, and dropped a search warrant on you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t tell me,” Armie said.
“Up to you,” Harmon said.
Armie looked at them all in turn, then said, “Tell me.”
Harmon said, “We’ve learned from an absolutely reliable source—absolutely reliable—that Thorne went to Waxahachie, Texas, this morning, to the company that supplied him with the computer-assisted rifle he’ll use in the assassination. If he’s planning an assassination.”
“I still find that hard to believe,” Armie said. “Though I worry. A lot.”
“Yeah. Well, Thorne killed two of the company’s employees and emptied out their file cabinets and also took the hard drives out of their computers.”
Armie went pale and was quiet as his mind worked through the news. Then: “He couldn’t have witnesses. If you go that far—to murder innocent people—then the target’s got to be large.”
“Correct,” Twist said.
Shay’s phone rang and she looked at the screen. Cade. She said, “I need to take this,” and walked away from the group to a corner of the office.
Armie watched her go and then asked, “Does that little girl have a gun on her hip?”
Twist said, “We’re not babysitters….”
Armie got back on topic: “You have to tell the feds about the rifle and the murders.”
Twist said, “We’ve told them about the gun. We’ll tell them about the murders when we’re in motion again. We really don’t want to be…sequestered.”
“Got to tell them soon, nip this in the bud.”
Shay overheard that as she came back from the corner and said, “The problem with the FBI is that they make a lot of phone calls and push stuff up the ladder and then back down the ladder, but by the time anything gets done, it’s too late. They’re like cleanup guys instead of preventers.”
“Is preventers a word?” Twist asked.
Shay held up a hand and said, “I don’t care,” and then, “That was Cade. He thinks he’s found Thorne.”
Harmon: “He thinks?”
“Thorne flew into an airport that’s north of downtown Phoenix. One of Varek Royce’s jets left an airport on the east side of Phoenix two hours later. Cade said he could have taken a cab or a limo between the airports in that time—if, of course, he got on the second plane at all. He can’t find a car rental or another plane rental from the first airport.”
“Not that tight a connection,” Twist said.
“Royce’s plane filed a flight plan to an airport just south of Washington, D.C.”
“Okay, that’s tighter,” Harmon said.
Armie: “You want a plane?”
Shay said, “Yes.”
Armie walked over to his desk and pushed a hidden button and said, “Lynn, call the guys and tell them we need the Gulfstream outta here ASAP, going into Washington. Any airport’s fine….”
Shay said, “Manassas. Manassas Airport.”
“Make that Manassas, Lynn.” Armie turned to the three of them and said, “You want a hotel?”
“That’d be great,” Twist said.
“How many rooms?”
“Three,” Shay said.
Armie pushed the button again and said, “Lynn, we’ll need three rooms at the Four Seasons in D.C., too.”
He looked back to them and asked, “Anything else?”
—
They checked out of the Skirvin Hilton and called Barin as they drove to the airport. Twist did the talking. He started with, “How’s it going, guy?”
“Mr. Twist, you’re getting yourself in deeper and deeper.”
“I’m counting on you to get me out,” Twist said. “Do that, and we’ll make you into a national hero.”
“I don’t really need to be a national hero….”
“Of course you do,” Twist said. “You hunger for it. I’m going to see that it gets done whether you like it or not. Here’s what I’m telling you, and you should write this down, because it is super important and it’s not something you want to forget.”
“Mr. Twist—”
“It’s just Twist. You got a pen?”
“Yes, but—”
“So, those pictures we sent you. Of the fancy rifle. The guy firing it is a former SEAL named Thorne who works for Singular, and
he is going to attempt to assassinate the president sometime in the next few days.”
“What!”
“He’s already in Washington, D.C. The gun is a computer-assisted high-power large-caliber sniper rifle built by a company called North Texas Ballistics. We have it on exceptionally good and accurate authority that last night Thorne flew into an airport near Waxahachie, Texas, where North Texas Ballistics is located, and murdered the two employees…”
“What!”
“…murdered the two employees, stripped the place of both paper and electronic records, and locked up behind himself. Let me give you the address of the place….” Twist read off the address for North Texas Ballistics, then continued: “We suggest you send a forensic team over there and check for spooled video on an Internet security site. It’ll probably show Thorne wearing a mask.”
“Mr. Twist, you gotta—”
“I suggest you not send the Waxahachie cops over there—you don’t want a bunch of flatfoots trampling all over the crime scene.”
“Twist…Mr. Twist—”
“Now, the other photo we sent—that one’s a gift from Dr. Janes. You’ll have noticed that it shows Senator Dash, Micah Cartwell, and the vice president at a meeting with several North Korean officials. You’ll recall that Dash and Cartwell are both dead now.”
“You’re killing me here, Twist. How do I know that’s not a Photoshop invention?”
“Have we been wrong yet? You’ve got to think about that. Also, Thorne is being flown around by a rich guy named Varek Royce.”
“The guy in the wheelchair?”
“He’s the money. And that’s about what we know. It’s in your hands, big guy.”
“Twist—”
Twist turned the phone off and yanked the battery. “I have little faith,” he said, “that I just did anyone any good.”
They left their vehicles at the airport. An hour later, they were on the way to Washington.
—
The Gulfstream jet felt like another luxurious hotel room, the way it was laid out, with beige leather seats the size of Barcaloungers, mahogany cocktail tables with built-in liquor cabinets, and, to everyone’s surprise, a tufted pink silk sofa positioned along one side of the cabin.
Harmon kicked back in a recliner and said, “I could easily get used to this.”
Twist: “Yeah. Go anywhere, anytime, bring your guns and dogs, get a couch.”
Shay: “That’s why Royce flew Thorne out of Phoenix last night: so he could bring the gun.”
Cade: “My folks have one of those plane services. I’ve been on those rent-a-jets, but they’re not like this. For one thing, they all smell funny.”
Shay: “This is the first airplane I’ve been on since I was about six years old.”
Cruz, peering out a window on takeoff: “This is the first time I’ve ever been.”
They all looked at him, and he said, “Hey—I’m an Angeleno. Why would I want to go anywhere else?”
“Good point,” Twist said.
—
Three hours after leaving Oklahoma City, they walked off the plane into a muggy evening in northern Virginia, found two SUVs waiting at Hertz. Twist and Cade took one, Harmon, Cruz, Shay, and X took the other, and they headed north into the gathering dusk.
Twenty minutes later, Shay said, “Oh my gosh, the Washington Monument.”
The monument looked like a white spear sticking into the night sky. Cruz craned his neck to see, and Harmon said, “The Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, and the Washington Monument—nothing quite like them anywhere else.”
“I’d like to climb up there someday,” Shay said.
“On the inside or the outside?” Harmon asked.
“Outside, it’d be tough,” Shay said. “You’d need a drill and a lot of bolts….”
“And some stick-in-the-mud bureaucrat would probably get really, really pissed,” Cruz said.
—
At the Four Seasons, the desk clerk took in X, frowned, said, “One moment, please,” and went away. One moment later, a manager appeared, who asked, “Do you have reservations?”
“Should have been made by Gerald Armie’s office out of Oklahoma City,” Harmon said. He handed the man the black card.
The manager took it, smiled, and said, “Of course. Three rooms. We’ll have a couple of Milk-Bones sent up. We have Purina Dog Chow on hand. Would that be all right?”
“That’d be fine,” Shay said. “If it doesn’t work for him, we’ll just order from room service.”
“We have the best burger in Washington. Ask to have it lightly cooked. If you check with the concierge, he will help you with dog-walking routes.”
On the way to the elevators, Harmon said, “I could really get used to this.”
“What’s the black-card thing?” Shay asked.
Harmon said, “It’s supposedly unlimited charging, no questions asked….I don’t know if it really is or not. Basically, it’s an expensive way to impress desk clerks and waiters, if that’s one of your concerns.”
“Not one of mine,” Shay said. “But…trying it out for a night isn’t uninteresting.”
—
They settled in their rooms, and Harmon knocked on Twist’s door after a while, and Twist asked, “Now what?”
Harmon said, “I’ve got an idea.”
“Another one?”
“Yeah. I know this guy….”
—
Shay went with Harmon to the Sixx Restaurant and Lounge at the Pentagon City shopping mall. Before they left the hotel, Harmon told her to leave the pistol and knife behind. “The guy we’re meeting is sorta old-fashioned when it comes to teenage behavior, so try to keep your mouth shut. You know, as much as possible without your head exploding.”
The man who showed up at the Sixx was a tall, wide army sergeant in full dress, with a dollar-bill-sized arrangement of ribbons above the left pocket of his uniform. Shay and Harmon were already sitting in the most shadowed booth in the restaurant when the sergeant showed up, and Harmon slid out to shake hands and then do a bit of shoulder bumping and backslapping.
Harmon said, “Chet, this is my friend Shay Remby, and, Shay, this is Sergeant Major Chester D. Landy. Chet speaks directly into the shell-like ear of the army chief of staff.”
They both said, “Pleased to meet you,” and Landy slid into the booth across from them. A waitress came, and the two men ordered beer and steaks, and Shay got a lemonade and a cheeseburger. Harmon and Landy spent twenty minutes talking about people they had known in Iraq and Afghanistan and about a fight in what Landy referred to as “that other place,” with an uncertain glance at Shay.
“You know Andy died?” Landy asked.
“Ah, man…”
“I talked to his wife, and she said he just quit. Stopped taking treatment. Took him about six weeks, but he managed to die.”
“I might have done the same, though I’d probably have found a quicker way,” Harmon said. They then both glanced at Shay, and Landy changed the subject again.
When the meal came, they nibbled around the edges for a few minutes, then Landy asked, “So, what’s this about?”
Harmon looked at him steadily, then said, “I’m going to ask a favor of you, but you’ll have to decide whether or not to do it. If it’s taken the wrong way, it could hurt your career.”
Landy smiled and said, “Hard to tell yet whether there’s much wiggle room. What’s the favor?”
Shay leaned across the table and said, “Harmon asked me to keep my mouth shut, but I have a really hard time doing that. I’ll try, but if you have any questions, I’ve got all the details right back to the beginning.”
“Give me the two-minute version,” Landy said.
Harmon: “An ex-SEAL named Thorne is in Washington, right now, with a computer-assisted sniper rifle, and he’s going to try to shoot the president.”
“You’re…,” Landy said.
“Serious. Yeah,” Harmon said. “He works for Singular—t
he company that’s blowing up now for doing experiments on humans. I used to work there, too, but now I’m trying to bring them down. It’s not right what they’re doing. Singular is well protected, though. Thorne has some feds running interference for him. Some of them probably in on it, some probably not. So I need to inject the information at a high enough level that somebody actually does something about it, and soon. We believe he could be planning to make the attempt in the next few days.”
“What do you want me to do?” Landy asked.
“We were hoping that you’d relay this to the chief of staff, and that he could get the White House to take it seriously. That’s our biggest problem—that the whole thing sounds crazy—but I have seen Thorne make one hit after another on a seven-inch target at twenty-two hundred yards.”
Landy blinked. “You’ve actually seen that?”
“Just a couple days ago, practicing at a measured distance for the shot. Look, talk to somebody who really knows his guns. He’ll have heard about this sniper rifle; it’s made by North Texas Ballistics. Look for North Texas Ballistics in the news.”
Landy was silent for a few seconds, then shifted uncomfortably and said, “If I didn’t know you…”
“Yeah, I know, sounds nuts,” Harmon said. “I’d react exactly the same way if the shoe was on the other foot. But we can give you a checklist of people to call, people to talk to, news reports to look up. There’s a guy in the FBI we’ve been feeding information to. We believe the danger is imminent.”
“I’m ordering a pot of coffee. Give me the whole version.”
Harmon tipped his head at Shay and said, “She knows it all.”
Shay started at the beginning.
Thorne and Denyers hooked up at the Manassas airport an hour after Shay, Twist, and the others arrived in Gerald Armie’s Gulfstream. Thorne had been in Jacksonville, checking into a motel, talking to the maids, establishing an alibi far away from Washington, D.C.
“You ready to do this?” Denyers asked when they were in his car.
“Why? You want to call it off?”
“No, but I won’t kid you,” Denyers said, “I’m scared.”
Thorne nodded.
Rampage Page 22
