Earlier, he had disposed of the driver’s license, birth certificate, and credit cards made out to John Grant. Those he had burned in a small fire, after which he had buried the ashes. There was nothing left to connect him with the Camp David incident. As a matter of fact, John Grant had, for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist.
About halfway to the city, he pulled in at a popular truck stop. He removed his overnighter from the rear of the car and walked into the rest room. Used to catering to long haul truckers, the truck stop’s men’s room had three shower stalls. John Barron stripped off his field clothes. He then showered and shaved before donning the Brooks Brothers suit that he took from his suitcase. After weeks in khakis and heavy knit shirts, the silk shirt, tie, and suit felt good.
He drove back to the Baltimore‑Washington International airport and turned in the rental. He left the car-return area, and then crossed the main airport access road to the long-term parking lot, where he placed his bags into the trunk of his car. He paid the parking fees, and then left the airport.
A half hour later, Barron stopped at an empty rest area. He went up to the pay phone, inserted his quarter, and punched in the pager number of his close friend, Bill Parker. If it hadn’t been for Parker’s call warning him about Wingate’s treachery, he’d be spread all over the western Maryland landscape. The response beep from the paging company’s computer signaled that it was time for Barron to enter his phone number. Done, he hung up the phone and waited.
If everything went as planned, Parker would get back to him as soon as he found a safe phone from which to make the call. If Barron didn’t hear from him in five minutes, something had gone wrong.
. . . . . .
Bill Parker felt the pager’s silent vibration, but didn’t make the mistake of glancing down at the unit hanging on his belt. Besides, the only call he’d be making would be to his lawyer.
The FBI had descended on the estate like ants at a picnic. Agents had read Parker his rights, and then handcuffed him while they tore the place apart. Even if he were lucky and they didn’t find the explosives he’d used to dispatch Grover Albright, there was no way he was going to shake the inevitable conspiracy charges.
John Barron watched as the last seconds ticked by, then started the car. In spite of everything that had taken place, there was nothing he could do for Parker except make certain he got the best attorney money could buy.
. . . . . .
Barron eased the car into the traffic. His options wide open, he decided Montana was nice this time of year. Besides, he knew he could be just about anyone he wanted to be.
. . . . . .
One Month Later
In NSA’s Operations Building, Lauren’s phone rang. She listened attentively to the directives from the Headquarters Building office. Then she replaced the receiver in its cradle, got up from her desk, and walked over to the classified storage cabinet.
As always, she carefully entered the combination unlocking the four-drawer file. From within, she removed the folder containing the Cutter intercepts. Leaving the office with the file still in her hand, she went over to a steel door built into the SCIF’s interior wall. Lauren pulled the door toward her, and then dropped the file folder into the chute. She closed the door and returned to her office. On the wall above the door in bold letters were the words CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT DESTRUCTION.
. . . . . .
It was a small wedding; the guests were few and select. There were no formal announcements sent out, nor any notices placed in the newspaper. In spite of its size, the marriage of Janet Phillips to Steven Payton was special. After all, it wasn’t every couple that exchanged wedding vows in the presence of the President of the United States.
. . . . . .
The cold winter temperatures chilled Allen Thiesse to the bone as he and Mary Neill stood at the entrance to the graveyard. This was the culmination of their investigation into the Committee, its members and operations. Wingate’s computer system had been a royal bitch to crack, but Lauren Woods and her team at the National Security Agency had finally begun making sense out of the limited information they had been able to salvage from the equipment confiscated at the estate.
It was a foregone conclusion that the conspiracy against the Varrick administration went much further than Charles Wingate II. Yet in spite of the recovery of most of the data from the system, the Secret Service was unable to identify any of the other members of the Committee.
They knew the cabal existed, and might still be operational, but nothing they had found pinpointed, much less hinted at, the identities of the remaining members. Even the telephone numbers taken from the intercepts had been a dead end. The calls made to the one cellular number that showed promise also ended abruptly. The phone in question belonged to a pediatric surgeon living in Baltimore County. Apparently the assassin had been able to get hold of a duplicate program chip containing the doctor’s number.
Thiesse only hoped that with the head of the snake gone, the others would be too disorganized and too afraid of discovery to make another attempt on Daniel Varrick’s life. Thiesse’s real interest was in the identity of the man who had bypassed the best security planning he could devise and fired the shot at the President. If Payton’s unannounced arrival hadn’t thrown off the assassin’s aim, Thiesse would be guarding the Vice President. More likely, Thiesse would have been canned.
Wingate’s records identified the object of his search as John Grant. Thiesse had pulled out all the stops and directed the task force to get a lead on the man. The Office of the President, without providing any explanation, got into the act, and such diverse organizations as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Defense, CIA, and even the Internal Revenue Service aided Thiesse’s search.
Unfortunately, and in spite of all the law enforcement and investigatory clout, their search yielded nothing on John Grant. The forensics team went over the fire tower looking for any trace evidence that would assist them in identifying the sniper, but found nothing. The fingerprint team took hundreds of latent fingerprints from Wingate’s estate, but were unable to match any of the prints against known killers. So far, all they knew was that he didn’t pay taxes and he had never been arrested.
A check with Interpol under the Grant pseudonym also turned up negative. Mary Neill had no idea how much computer time they had expended trying to come up with a lead, any lead, on the man.
To this end, she and Thiesse had driven up to the Pennsylvania town. The agents out of the Philadelphia field office had reported that a John Grant of roughly the same age as the assassin had been baptized in the small parish.
Rather than have the field team interview the minister, Thiesse had decided that he and Mary would make the trip. He’d been in the office too much since the assassination attempt, and the trip would do him good. Besides, he had a gut feeling about this lead.
When Thiesse and Neill got to the church, the ancient cleric only vaguely remembered that the Grant family had been members of the congregation. The wizened old man did recall that part of the family had been buried in the church’s cemetery.
“I think he said the graves were back here,” Mary Neill said as she walked among the marble and stone monuments. Her boss turned down what passed for the next row of gravestones and walked over to where she was standing.
“They must have tried to have some type of arrangement for the graves, but when plots went for a premium, they gave it up.”
Thiesse walked back to the next row of graves behind where Mary Neill was reading the names off the headstones. She had just finished the row she was on when she noticed that Thiesse was standing in front of one headstone, slowly shaking his head.
She didn’t say a word, but went over to where he stood. She read the inscription on the stone: “John Grant” followed by the dates “September 22, 1956 to August 4, 1957”.
Overhead, the church bells tolled their knell. Their search was over.
Acknowledgments
I
’d like to thank all the people who helped me in the writing of this book.
My sincerest thanks to Alan Glotzer for his multiple readings of the manuscript, and his countless suggestions as to how to make this a “better read”.
To Larry Kumjian for helping me with getting the Secret Service procedures as well as everything else about the Secret Service righ
Also to Don Rossi for his words of encouragement and in reading the final manuscript.
My thanks to Dean Koontz. I gained a lot from Mr. Koontz’s HOW TO WRITE BEST SELLING FICTION.
And most of all, for my inspiration, best friend, and wife, Jenn.
If you like THE CASSANDRA CONSPIRACY, you may want to read the first chapters of THE PALADIN DECEPTION. This book is currently available from Amazon.
Pocket Veto
By
Rick Bajackson
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission from the author.
Copyright 2013 Rick Bajackson
I welcome your comments, letting me know about any errors that you found in the book, and suggestions on this or any of my other books. Email me at [email protected]. Better yet, visit my website (http://rickbajackson.wordpress.com/).
Prologue
Jim Reilly shook the cobwebs from his head and reached for the thermos of now tepid coffee that sat beside him on the tractor-trailer’s console. He poured a half-cup of the coffee, but it had cooled to the point where it wasn’t worth drinking.
Reilly opened his window then tossed contents of the cup out into the night. The glow emanating from the instrument cluster combined with the intermittent flash as the tractor trailer passed the warm sodium vapor lighting along the interstate’s shoulder merging the dashed lines of the lane markers into one long ribbon.
Perched comfortably in the driver’s seat, he had been keeping a steady pace since he left North Carolina twelve hours earlier. His route would take him straight up Interstate 95 past Richmond, around Washington, and then directly into Maryland. For someone used to long trips, Reilly wasn’t sure why he was so damned tired. Stifling yet another yawn, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
Reilly eased back on the accelerator, remembering the importance the company placed on safe driving. The last few hours, he had been maintaining a steady pace, averaging about ten miles per hour above the double nickel. The Kenworth’s power plant droned on; the engine noises mixing with the cacophony coming from the trucker’s citizen band radio and his omnipresent AM radio station.
Channel nineteen, long since abandoned by the four wheelers, was now the sole domain of the truckers who shared the loneliness of the black asphalt strip with their fellow compatriots. Instead of erasing the sleep from his head, the engine’s muted sound lulled Reilly into a state of tranquility. Struggling to keep the sandman from taking over, he hummed along with the country and western song coming across the nighttime airwaves.
Reilly’s load this trip consisted of four sets of Mactech airborne systems. He had looked briefly at the manifest before leaving the North Carolina plant. The single flimsy simply referred to the cargo as “Pocket Veto Drones”, which in military parlance came out to PVS-2. Reilly wondered what the “2” designation referred to–the second generation, an improved model? What difference did it make? He was the load’s custodian until he saw if off-loaded at the plant.
He had been working full time for Mactech Systems for over two years; the pay was good, the hours respectable. Before his buddy told him about the opening, Reilly had been an independent, going where the business was, away from home, his wife and six year old son more times than not.
And definitely more than he wanted. No more free-lance truckin’ for Jim Reilly. Sure some of the independents pulled down more cash when they were working, but when the economy nose-dived, work quickly became sporadic. Some of Reilly’s independent friends would have given their right arms for a chance at a steady job and a guaranteed paycheck.
Again Reilly tried to brush the sleep from his eyes, but the old sand man hung in there, refusing to cut him a break. After a dozen years doing long-haul, Reilly knew when it was time a coffee break. He glanced at his watch, ten after eleven. What the hell? Another half hour wouldn’t hurt his schedule one way or the other. He wasn’t on any deadline–save that the shipment had to be at Mactech’s loading dock before plant opening time tomorrow. That he’d easily do. The last of the four wheelers were still on the highway. In another hour, the interstate would be abandoned to the long‑haul truckers.
From past trips Reilly knew that one of I95’s better truck stops was coming up. He eased the rig over into the deceleration lane. Less than two miles passed before he pointed the rig toward the exit ramp, downshifting to ease it’s speed.
As he pulled on to the truck stop’s parking lot, Reilly noticed that there were numerous tractor trailers, some with their power refrigeration systems running, parked side by side, front to back, along the lot.
A couple of the drivers were doing more than taking five as evidenced by fogged windshields and drawn curtains. The word was that a local prostitution ring was doing a bang up business at the stop in spite of the feeble attempts by the cops to clean up the place. What the hell? Boys would be boys. If the four wheelers didn’t like it, they could find somewhere else to eat and gas up.
Reilly found a suitable parking space toward the rear of the lot. He pulled in bringing the Kenworth to a stop. One more check of the manifest to be certain the shipment was classified–it wasn’t–and he’d be off.
If the equipment had been classified, there was no way that Reilly would have left the rig. Leaving classified electronics unprotected was a surefire way to find one’s employment with Mactech over.
Clambering out of the cab, Reilly locked the door behind him. Before heading for the diner, he walked over to a steel equipment cabinet welded to the rear of the tractor.
Two steel clad cables snaked from the bottom of the box. One looped off and went forward toward the tractor, while its cousin went through an access point into the trailer. From his ring, Reilly inserted a special key into a keyhole in the cabinet, and then turned it once to the right arming the rig’s elaborate electronic security system.
In a split second, the system’s microprocessor checked all the sensors and found everything set, a light on the panel lit up signifying that the trailer as well as all doors leading into the trailer and those on the cab were secure.
The system, also a product of Mactech Systems, protected the truck and its contents from everything short of a nuclear explosion. If anyone attempted to open any of the doors, the ones in the tractor or the double steel doors on the connecting trailer, all hell broke loose. Meanwhile a relay clicked open preventing anyone from starting the Kenworth’s diesel engine. Jacking the trailer or even deflating a tire caused the system to squawk.
At the same time, a specially coded message would be transmitted through the rig’s cellular phone system to Mactech’s plant north of Baltimore. Finally, Reilly’s miniature pager would beep telling him that someone was intent upon making off with his shipment.
Reilly recalled the security briefing he had received when he first started with the company. He was told that if the pager went off, he was first to see if anyone was around the rig. If he saw someone lurking, he was only to call the police, then observe the scene for license numbers and descriptions. He was to take no further action.
Mactech’s security chief made it clear‑‑nothing the drivers carried was worth jeopardizing their lives over. In all the years that Reilly had been working for Mactech Systems, the pager had never gone off. And he didn’t have any reason to
expect otherwise tonight. With the rig secure, Jim Reilly walked across the parking lot and into the restaurant.
Less than a half hour later, “Big Jim” Reilly returned to his rig. After deactivating the alarm, he climbed back into the truck and kicked the engine into life. He allowed the diesel time to come up to temperature before leaving the parking lot on his way back on to I95. To Reilly, the rig seemed different, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He wrote it off to not enough sleep coupled with too many miles under his belt.
He’d been back in the saddle only a few minutes when he noticed the sign announcing that a makeshift inspection station was less than a mile away. The Maryland State Police, not content to hassle the truckers during daylight hours, had gone to night inspections. Typically, those stops lasted only a few minutes, long enough to check the weight and perform a routine safety inspection.
Reilly glanced at his watch. Even if they held him up half the night, he’d still make it with time to spare. Off on the right shoulder, Reilly saw the trooper, flashlight in hand, signaling him over. He flicked the turn signal on and dimmed his high beams as he began the slow process of bringing the Kenworth to a halt.
“Good evening, officer,” Reilly said as he emerged from the tractor, his clipboard in his hand.
“Good evening, sir. We’re part of the Maryland State Police transportation unit, and we’re doing a spot check on those trucks that use the state’s highways. What’re you carrying tonight?”
“Electronic systems on consignment to Mactech Systems, north of Baltimore.”
The Cassandra Conspiracy Page 41
